Born in 1973 in Singen Florian Schiertz comes from an artistic background, as both his parents are active in the field of fine arts. He received piano lessons at the age of seven and at fourteen he started learning drums. In 1988 he was attracted to the tabla through seeing Trilok Gurtu who notated a composition ("Dha te te Dha te te Dha Dha te te Dha ge tu na ka ta") for him after a concert. This first poignant experience of the sound world and playing technique of the tabla led Florian in 1993 to take lessons in tabla playing in Freiburg. He worked with Latin American music, Indonesian gamelan, jazz and traditional western classical music. Two of the major influences have been Bela Bartok and Ali Akbar Khan. He is also the author of a treatise for drum-kit entitled 'tablaisches drumset spiel'.

At the age of twenty-one Florian decided to specialise in tabla playing and became a resident student of Udai Mazumdar (himself a pupil of Ashutosh Bhattacharya and Pandit Ravi Shankar) in both Basel and Delhi. In addition he commenced studies in 1996 at the Rotterdam Conservatoire with Ustad Fayaz Khan. In 2000 he completed his teaching diploma facilitated by a DAAD scholarship which also involved intensive training by means of the traditional Guru-Shisha-Parampara method with Sumantra Guha - himself a pupil of the great Jnanprakash Ghosh. In 2003 Florian graduated with a Masters (M.Mus.) in performance cum laude at the Rotterdam Conservatoire in the fields of tabla and north Indian classical music.

Since then he has been active as a freelance musician giving concerts both as a soloist and as accompanist to distinguished musicians including Budhaditya Mukherjee, Ken Zuckerman, Surendran Reddy and taking part in renowned music festivals in India ("Navarang", Calcutta), in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and France (DIG-Darmstadt, Indian Embassy in Berlin, Consulate General of India in Frankfurt, Muffatwerk Muenchen, Internationales Zupfinstrument Festival in Bamberg, "Culturall" in Switzerland, Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, Mandappa Hall in Paris) and in South Africa (Universities of Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Stellenbosch).

He has participated in radio and television broadcasts for Radio Uetrecht, Deutschlandfunk and E-TV in Madhya Pradesh (India). He has also recorded CDs with numerous artists including the aforementioned Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee. Together with Roman Bunka he recently composed and performed the music for the film 'Die Legende von Shiva und Parvati' directed by Krishna Sarasvati. Florian composed 'tablapiece' in modern music notation - the system is using a five line staff - as an accompaniment for the piano composition 'Toccata for John Roos' by Surendran Reddy. In spring 2006 he will return from his 12th performing and studying sojourn in India to live at Lake Constance in Germany.