Uli Müller

Uli Müller — German keyboard player — was part of At Vance in the classic line-up, between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s. His function is central to the band's formula. Olaf Lenk's At Vance adapts pieces of classical music — Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach — into a metal format, and the keyboard is what makes it possible to reconstruct in arrangement what the guitar does not cover: string lines, countermelodies and the original harmony of the score. In the band's own material his function follows the neoclassical tradition: the keyboard shares solos with the guitar on equal footing, alternating phrases at speed, and does not work as an accompanying bed. It is a format demanding a keyboard player performing at the same technical level as the guitarist. Müller was on the records that established At Vance in the European circuit — No Escape (1999), Heart of Steel (2000), Dragonchaser (2001), Only Human (2002) and The Evil in You (2003) — the period with Oliver Hartmann on vocals and the most stable line-up in the band's history.