Kurt Maas

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Kurt Maas with accordion

Kurt Maas (born September 4, 1942 in Neusattl , Sudetenland ; † May 6, 2011 in Pöcking ) was a German jazz musician and music teacher .

He played a key role in setting up the jazz department at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich , which is now the Jazz Institute of the Munich University of Music and Theater .

Live and act

After the war, Maas had to leave his home in the course of being expelled from the Sudetenland and fled to Franconia with his mother . At the age of nine he received accordion lessons and, under the influence of the American jazz accordionist Art Van Damme, made the decision to study the accordion at an early age. At the request of his parents, he completed an apprenticeship as a wholesale merchant. Immediately afterwards, at the age of 16, he moved to Trossingen to study the accordion with Hubert Deuringer at the Hohner Conservatory . After three years of study, Maas founded a trio in 1962, with whom he worked as a ship musician on scheduled services between America and Europe for the Home Lines shipping company. In December 1963, the shipping company gave him a free trip to America to study jazz composition and arrangement at Berklee College of Music in Boston .

Musical career

Kurt Maas and the big band of the Richard Strauss Conservatory

After returning to Germany in 1965, Maas toured with various formations through Germany, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and Italy and played in American clubs in Munich and other Bavarian cities. In 1971 Maas took over the leadership of the Rehearsal Big-Band founded by Rudi Nagora in 1962, in which u. a. Heinz Schellerer, Toni Ketterle, Jimmy Polivka and Dave King played. This was followed by appearances in the Domicile and in the jazz cellar in Türkenstrasse ( Munich ), as well as live recordings by Bayerischer Rundfunk . In the early 1970s, Maas increasingly shifted his interest to educational activities. He taught musicians like Thomas Fuchsberger , Etienne Cap , Max Greger junior , Georges Delagaye , Jörg Evers in arrangement and composition.

Maas did pioneering work in jazz pedagogy when he first taught rhythm, phrasing, improvisation and arrangement as optional additional subjects at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich in 1972 . Since there was no independent jazz course at the time, Maas founded the Big Band of the Munich Music Students, in which every student interested in jazz could play. Over the years, numerous students, including Claus Reichstaller , Harald Rüschenbaum , Peter Tuscher and Thomas Zoller , have had formative big band experiences there. The big band had numerous appearances in Munich, B. together with Benny Bailey in the Unterfahrt or regularly on the jazz night in Gasteig . On the recommendation of Max Frey , Maas accepted a position as a lecturer at the University of Music and Theater in Munich in the school music department in 1979 . There he taught the basics of jazz & rock music as well as practical piano playing. During this time he developed jazz didactic teaching methods for jazz phrasing and improvisation.

Development of the jazz department

His constant endeavor to establish jazz studies in Munich as an independent university subject initially failed, despite top-class support, due to objections from the Ministry of Finance. It was only when Martin Maria Krüger took over from Peter Jona Korn as director of the Richard Strauss Conservatory in 1987 that the course for a jazz course in Munich was positive. Jazz was introduced as a major in October 1991. This also included the establishment of a new department, which Kurt Maas initially headed on an interim basis and from 1995 until his retirement in 2008. He designed the entire range of courses for jazz and was able to meet numerous well-known colleagues, B. Leszek Zadlo , Leonid Chizhik , Claus Reichstaller , Paulo Cardoso , Tizian Jost , Peter O'Mara , Hermann Breuer and Thomas Zoller . The jazz department has been headed by Claus Reichstaller since the Richard Strauss Conservatory was incorporated into the Munich University of Music and Theater in 2008.

Entrepreneurial activities

In 1969 Lawrence Berk , the founder of Berklee College in Boston , Maas offered to market the publishing works of Berklee College in Germany. American sheet music, especially big band arrangements, were not available in Germany at the time. The increasing demand for these notes led to the founding of the Kurt Maas sheet music distribution company, which was able to steadily expand its range over the course of time and establish the alle-oten.de brand with the entry into online trading. Furthermore, Kurt Maas founded the company Amadeus Music Software together with Wolfgang Hamann in 1980, which developed one of the first music notation programs .

Other activities

Kurt Maas worked for many years as a studio musician and composer in addition to his teaching activities. He wrote and played music for a number of RW Fassbinder films , composed trailers for documentary and TV films ( Bayern-Kini ), worked for over a decade as a stage musician at the Residenztheater in Munich and at the Münchner Kammerspiele , and wrote various stage music (including for Gerhard Loew ) and a number of compositions and arrangements for big band (including for Max Greger , Hugo Strasser , Erwin Lehn ) as well as for combo and choir. There were also publications on jazz harmony theory ( The musical sentence ) and rhythm / phrasing ( 1000 rhythm patterns ). In addition, he gave numerous master classes and directed the jazz ensemble of the Bavarian Youth Accordion Orchestra. Maas was also a sought-after juror in the Bavarian Music Council.

Private

Kurt Maas has a son and three sons and a daughter from his second marriage from his first marriage. Until his death he lived in Pöcking on Lake Starnberg .

Kurt Maas Jazz Award

In 2013 , the Jazz Institute of the University of Music and Theater Munich presented the Kurt Maas Jazz Award for the first time in memory of Kurt Maas . The award serves to promote young, talented jazz musicians from the Jazz Institute and is donated every two years by Camilo Dornier, a Berklee graduate and former student of Kurt Maas. The 2013 winners were Matthias Lindermayr ( trumpet ), Martin Seitz ( saxophone ) and Andreas Unterreiner (trumpet). At the award winners' concert, u. a. Abe Laboriel , Dusko Goykovich and Leonid Chizhik . The main prize is a five-week study visit to the Berklee College of Music in Boston . The second prize is associated with a performance in the nightclub of the Bayerischer Hof, the third prize consists of a course at an international jazz academy.

Works (selection)

  • 1984: 1000 rhythm patterns: With jazz phrasing
  • 1986: Swing Sweetly
  • 1989: Nice & Sweet
  • 1991: 3 count 4
  • 1992: Drive In
  • 1994: Double Trouble

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary of the Munich University of Music and Theater , accessed on April 11, 2014.
  2. ↑ Kurt Maas: Jazz musician, teacher and entrepreneur at jazz.musikhochschule-muenchen.de, accessed on April 17, 2014.
  3. ^ History of the Jazz Department , accessed April 11, 2014.
  4. ^ History of the mailing of sheet music , accessed on April 11, 2014.
  5. ^ Winner of the Kurt Maas Jazz Award , accessed on April 11, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Maas, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German jazz musician and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Neusattl
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 2011
Place of death Poecking