Gerald Weinkopf

Gerald "Gerry" Weinkopf (born December 29, 1925 in Mährisch Ostrau ; † November 30, 1992 ) was a musician ( tenor saxophonist , flutist , composer and arranger) and television journalist. Originally a jazz musician, alongside Franz Bummerl, he was one of the most important people in the early days of the “Egerland musicians” around Ernst Mosch .

Life

Gerald Weinkopf played the accordion as a teenager and later became familiar with many musical instruments. Among other things, he played the viola , tenor horn , tuba and violin .

During the Second World War he founded his own dance band, in which he first played the alto saxophone and from 1947 on the tenor saxophone. After the war he mainly played jazz in American clubs until he joined Erwin Lehn and his Südfunk-Tanzorchester as first tenor saxophonist in 1954 , where he stayed until 1962. He also played in Horst Jankowski's sextet , in 1958 with John Lewis and in 1959 with Wolfgang Lauth (feature film “Praeludium in Jazz”). In 1960 he performed at the German Jazz Festival . Von Weinkopf, who had been one of the best jazz musicians as a flautist and saxophonist in the surveys of the trade journals for years (he was part of the German All Stars 1958), was known to write good jazz arrangements.

Nothing was known of his old but secret love for brass music, although Gerald Weinkopf was already composing for the brass band in his homeland at the age of 14. Spontaneously he wrote some arrangements for Ernst Mosch and his newly founded “Egerländer Musikanten”. This became a life's work for him. From 1956 until his death in 1992 Gerald Weinkopf worked as arranger and lyricist for the “Egerland Musicians”. He shaped their sound and success significantly. Under his pseudonym Bruno Zwinger he wrote, among other things, the texts for the titles “See you soon, goodbye”, “Stars of the homeland” and “We are children from Eger”. He also wrote the text for the successful waltz “Moonlight on the Eger”.

Weinkopf had been working full-time as a "music consultant" for Süddeutscher Rundfunk (Südfunk-Fernsehen) since 1962 . As such, he was responsible for numerous classic television music programs in the sixties, e. B. concerts with Maurice André or the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under Karl Münchinger . Outstanding church concerts as well as the series “Bei der Arbeit observed” (programs in which famous conductors were observed developing orchestral works with orchestras) came about under his responsibility. In SDR's own magazine “Südfunk” (August 1968 issue), the journalist Hans-Dieter Musch , who was then the station's press officer, describes in detail Weinkopf's attitude towards playback and classical music.

swell

• Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler: Reclams Jazzführer (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 10185/10196). Reclam, Stuttgart 1970, ISBN 3-15-010185-9 .

Web links

• Works by and about Gerald Weinkopf in the catalog of the German National Library