The Pickaxe Collective is a Dortmund-based international music collective founded by Canadian-born singer, songwriter Alex Suderman.
Blending alternative rock, folk, experimental music and elements of jazz, the Collective creates songs that explore the strange territory where faith, doubt, desire, suffering, beauty and hope meet.
The Pickaxe Collective approaches Christian rooted, spiritual themes through poetry, narrative, experimentation and sound—inviting listeners into a story.
The result is music intended to be experienced first as music: atmospheric, melodic, sometimes unsettling, sometimes playful, and always searching.
Creative Cultural Engagement
We live in a complex, technologically interconnected world with a plethora of voices in what the German Philosopher, Nietzsche, called in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “the marketplace" of ideas.
The music, writings, and various artistic expressions in this project derive from a prayerful reflection on the scriptures.
As the Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote, we have discovered the “strange world within the Bible.”
This story still captures the imagination, and in it we see God’s redemptive vision for the world.
Gospel Renewal
In the biblical imagery from Genesis to Revelation, we see that the Spirit is preparing the ground for the garden city of God (Revelation 21-22).
People are united from diverse ethnic backgrounds to be one in Christ: a new people, a new creation.
This vision fits with the Ruhrgebiebt, a multicultural, post-industrial region once economically driven by coal and steel. The pickaxe and shovel were essential tools in this city for mining.
In Dortmund, it was also used for forging a new canal that would link the city to the sea.
While it was once one of the most polluted cities in Germany. Dortmund is now one of the greenest - filled with trees and parks - and we believe even deeper transforming is coming. - Alex Suderman, Ph.D