Esther Kaiser

Esther Kaiser

Esther Kaiser (* 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) is a German jazz singer .

Live and act

After graduating from high school, Esther Kaiser first studied psychology at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . During this time she took part in the national singing competition in Berlin twice (1996 and 1998) and was among the top ten participants nationwide both times. In 1996 she went to Berlin to study jazz and popular music in the field of singing at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin . Between 1996 and 2001 she studied a. a. with Jiggs Whigham , Judy Niemack , Alfons Wonneberg and Ute Becker. During this time she was not only occupied with jazz, but also with chanson and musical theater . Between 1998 and 2000 she made guest appearances with the "Ensemble Weil ..." under the direction of Ari Benjamin Meyers in three pieces by Bertolt Brecht on various Berlin stages (" Mahagonny Songspiel " 1998, " Happy End " 1999 and " Threepenny Opera " 2000) . In addition, she dealt with the chansons of the Berlin composer Helge Jung , with whom she had a musical collaboration for many years. In 1999 she toured in the concert line-up of the Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Peter Herbolzheimer . During this time Esther Kaiser founded the vocal quartet Berlin Voices together with Marc Secara , Kristofer Benn and Sarah Kaiser , which worked with the hr big band under the direction of Jörg Achim Keller . She is also a member of the sound district vocal quartet .

In 2004 she made her debut with her CD “Jazz Poems” (on the jazz label Double Moon Records ) as the first artist in the “Next Generation” series by Jazzthing magazine . Her albums “The Moment We Met” ( minor music , 2006) and “Cozy in Bed” ( GLM , 2009) followed. These three albums focus on arrangements of originally instrumental compositions and on composing your own songs. During this creative phase, in which Esther Kaiser also recorded elements of Tango Nuevo and New Music , she worked with musicians such as Carsten Daerr (piano), Marc Muellbauer (bass), Jens Dohle (drums), Tino Derado (piano / accordion), Jonas Schoen (saxophone), Friedrich Paravicini (cello), Tilmann Dehnhard (saxophone, flute), Uwe Steinmetz (saxophone), Sven Klammer (trumpet), Kai Brückner (guitar), Friedemann Graef (saxophone), Volker Schlott (saxophone), Uli Moritz (drums, percussion) and others

In 2012 the CD "sternklar" was released in collaboration with the pianist Claus-Dieter Bandorf with contemporary arrangements in the field of jazz-pop under the theme of old German folk song on the HGBS label . In January 2015 the fourth CD was released under his own name: "Learning how to listen - the music of Abbey Lincoln" ( GLM label ). On this CD, a production by the RBB's Kulturradio (editor by Ulf Drechsel), Esther Kaiser deals exclusively with songs by the jazz singer, lyricist and composer Abbey Lincoln . In addition to Tino Derado on piano, Marc Muellbauer on bass and Roland Schneider on drums, Franz Bauer on vibraphone and marimba and Rüdiger Krause on guitar can be heard.

Tours have taken Esther Kaiser to Azerbaijan and Southeast Asia.

Esther Kaiser has been a professor at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden since 2014 for singing, jazz, rock and pop (teaching position). a. together with Celine Rudolph , Till Brönner and Jäcki Reznicek ( Silly ).

In 2017 the idea for the new album "Songs of Courage" arose when Esther Kaiser played the musicians Hasan Al Nour (Kanun) and Akram Younus Al Siraj (cello) from the Dresden formation "Banda Internationale" at a concert at the Carl Maria Academy of Music von Weber met in Dresden. The album "Songs of Courage" with the term "Courage" as the main theme, which was recorded and produced by Esther Kaiser and Volker Greve in the GREVE Studio Berlin between October 2017 and February 2018, was released on August 31, 2018 on the GLM label and brings in a very Berlin jazz musicians Tino Derado, Marc Muellbauer, Roland Schneider, Rüdiger Krause, Franz Bauer and Birgitta Flick have a special line-up with refugee musicians. Pieces like Michael Jackson's “Earth Song” meet compositions by Bob Dylan (“Masters of War”) and Hanns Eisler (An den kleine Radioapparat) - the songs are united by a political and socially critical attitude.

Esther Kaiser now writes as an author for the vocal journal VOX HUMANA of the BDG (Association of German Singing Pedagogues).

Discography (selection)

• 2004: Jazz Poems , Double Moon Records
• 2006: The moment we met , Minor Music
• 2007: Berlin Voices - States of Mind , VanDyck Records
• 2009: Cozy in Bed , GLM
• 2010: Berlin Voices - About Christmas , Hännsler Klassik
• 2012: * star clear , HGBS
• 2015: Learning how to listen - the music of Abbey Lincoln , GLM
• 2018: Songs of Courage , GLM

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jazz thing Next Generation Vol. 1
2. ↑ Esther Kaiser in the feather down
3. ^ EPK Learning How to Listen
4. ↑ Esther Kaiser - Singing Jazz / Rock / Pop ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Official website of Esther Kaiser
• Berlin Voices on berlinvoices.de
• Esther Kaiser on glm.de
• Esther Kaiser - Singing Jazz / Rock / Pop on the website of the University of Music Carl Maria von Weber Dresden