Günter Lenz (musician)

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Günter Lenz at the Unterfahrt jazz club (Munich 2009)

Günter Lenz (born July 25, 1938 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German jazz bassist and composer.

Live and act

Lenz first learned to play guitar with the help of Carlo Bohländer and since the mid-1950s he has played jazz in clubs of the US Army. During military service in 1959/1960 he switched to the double bass. Albert Mangelsdorff brought the newcomer on bass after Peter Trunk into his Albert Mangelsdorff quintet, which was newly formed in 1961 . Since then Lenz has been a member of the “ hr jazz ensemble ”, for which he also arranges and composes. In 1965 he also worked in Krzysztof Komeda's quintet . In 1968 he played with Joachim Kühn and Aldo Romano in Barney Wilen's band ; At the Berlin Jazz Days in 1970 he also played with the sextet of George Russell and with the band of Leon Thomas . In 1972 Günter Lenz got out of Mangelsdorff to play with Kurt Edelhagen . This allowed him to gain experience in big band for a year and to think about arranging for jazz groups.

After the Edelhagen band broke up in 1973, he moved to Munich , where the former Edelhagen arrangers Peter Herbolzheimer , Dieter Reith and Jerry van Rooyen were in great demand and built up a rhythm section for studio work. American jazz musicians valued the collaboration with him: Chet Baker , Coleman Hawkins , Oliver Nelson and Benny Bailey hired him for their concert tours and record productions, but also German musicians such as Eugen Cicero , Horst Jankowski and Volker Kriegel . In the mid-1970s he formed a fusion trio with Peter Giger and Eddy Marron and also played in the rhythm section of Clarinet Contrast and in Manfred Schoof's quintet . With his colleagues Günter Kronberg and Ralf Hübner , who left the Mangelsdorff band in 1971 , as well as the pianist Bob Degen and the saxophonist Heinz Sauer , he played in the Voices group at the same time . He then founded his group Springtime (initially with trumpeter Johannes Faber , saxophonists Frank St. Peter and Leszek Zadlo , Bob Degen and drummer Joe Nay ), with which he won the German Record Prize twice . He played in a trio with Charly Antolini and Dirk Raufeisen as well as with Patrick Bebelaar and Herbert Joos . He also performed with the Südpool ensemble around Joos and Bernd Konrad.

Lenz also created orchestral arrangements for Plácido Domingo , the dancer Nina Corti , the Radio Philharmonie des NDR and the big bands from HR and NDR. From 2001 to 2006 he taught bass as a professor at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and was awarded the Hessian Jazz Prize in 2004. The Waldi Heidepriem Foundation also awarded him (2000) one of the most highly endowed prizes in the industry as the best German jazz musician.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lenz, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German jazz bassist
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main