About the concert
Hardly anyone could walk as spectacularly between jazz and ‘classical piano music’ as the pianist Lorenz Kellhuber. Whether improvising over Ostinati in alternating layers or between free tonality and bound harmonic sound anchors, Lorenz Kellhuber creates an intimate, concentrated situation between himself, the piano, the space and his audience, writes the Neue Musikzeitung about his current solo album Live at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
Classical music is firmly anchored in his DNA, jazz taught him to stand on his own two feet and in free improvisation Lorenz Kellhuber always finds the limitless fulfillment of his musical vision, a Contemporary Chamber Music. He plays with his own musical history and intuitively seeks out various stations of his musical imprint, ranging from the Baroque to the modern age.
Kellhuber also finds great inspiration in the Great American Songbook, whose pieces, also known as Jazz Standards, provide a perfect basis for extravagant improvisations. With what inventiveness, virtuosity and understanding of the history of jazz Lorenz Kellhuber meets these jazz standards, you can experience in his project “Standard Experience”, with which he performs in high-calibre and changing formations and has so far released the highly acclaimed album “The Brooklyn Session”.
With Joe Sanders on bass and Jesse Simpson on drums, Kellhuber has now invited two of the most prominent musicians in the American jazz scene. Together they celebrate the fusion of three musical souls at the highest level and let the Great American Songbook shine in new splendor.
Born in Munich in 1990 as the son of a church musician and a church musician, Lorenz Kellhuber began a classical piano education with Brigitte Schmid at the HfKM Regensburg at the age of five. At the age of eleven he was accepted there as a young student and as a member of the Bavarian early education class also in violin and chamber music by Prof. Conrad from Goltz. From 2003 he receives piano lessons from Prof. Franz Massinger, a student of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.
Shortly afterwards he is discovered by Rob Bargad (Nat Adderley Quintet) and intensively introduced to jazz styles. At only 16 years old, Kellhuber passed the highly gifted examination and became a student at the Jazz Institute Berlin, where Hubert Nuss and Kurt Rosenwinkel are among his lecturers. During regular stays in New York, he also receives lessons from Fred Hersch and Sophia Rosoff and finishes his studies in 2010 as one of the world’s youngest bachelor graduates. Since then, his concerts have taken him through Europe, the USA and South America.
He played on international stages such as the Berliner Philharmonie, Isarphilharmonie München, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Montreux Jazz Festival, Basel Jazz Festival, Getxo Jazz Festival, Bohemia Jazz Festival, Mar del Plata Jazz Festival, Jazzwoche Burghausen. Concerts as sideman and co-leader he played alongside Ed Partyka, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Charles Lloyd, Ack van Rooyen, Johannes Enders, Adele Neuhauser & Edi Nulz, Jesse 2
Simpson, Orlando Le Fleming, Steven Heelein, Obed Calvaire, Bob Mintzer and much more. In the summer of 2014, Monty Alexander named him the first German musician to win the prestigious Montreux Jazz Piano Solo Competition. In 2016, he was nominated for ECHO Jazz in the category “Newcomer of the Year”, in 2018 he was one of the ten “new key players” in the magazine “Jazz thing”.
He has released a total of nine albums and one EP since 2012, including the solo albums “Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival” (2017), “Contemporary Chamber Music” (2021) and “Live at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg” (2022). Since completing his studies, Lorenz Kellhuber has been a sought-after lecturer. He regularly gives workshops and master classes at home and abroad. For the winter semester 2021, Kellhuber received the call as a professor at the Carl Maria von Weber School of Music in Dresden.
Together with Jugendfreunden, Lorenz Kellhuber founded the Regensburg Chamber Music Festival in 2020, which he continues to direct and curate.
Born in 1984 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Joe Sanders was interested in a variety of sounds from his youth, whether in the form of blues from the radio or music in the Baptist church, which was filled with sublime voices. Since leaving the Midwest for California in 2002 to study at the Brubeck Institute, he has been lucky enough to play and learn alongside greats such as Dave Brubeck, Christian McBride, Terence Blanchard, Ron Carter, Roy Hargrove, John Clayton, Jimmy Heath, Joshua Redman, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter and Geri Allen.
After a successful graduation from Thelonious Monk Institute in 2007, where he was now studying, Sanders moved to New York City and quickly became an integral part of the flourishing New York jazz scene. His diversity as a bassist is now proven with over 30 CD recordings as a sideman. As a bandleader, he most recently released the album “Humanity”, which featured Aaron Parks, Eric Harland and John Ellis.
Jesse Simpson, born in 1989, is from Graton, California. After growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and studying with legendary drummer Donald "Duck" Bailey, he moved to New York City in 2007, where he quickly made a name for himself in the local jazz scene and took up studies at the Manhattan School of Music and graduated in 2010. Since then, Simpson has performed alongside Louie Bellson, accompanied the comedians Fred Armisen and Janeane Garafalo and toured with jazz greats such as Marc Copland, Kevin Hays, Joe Lovano, John Abercrombie, Chris Cheek and many others.
In addition, he makes very successful drum pools, on which he himself and now also many other renowned jazz drummers play. After 15 years in New York City, Simpson moved his life to Prague in 2022, from where he now enriches the European jazz scene.