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Gebhard Ullmann | |
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 Ullmann at Jazz Club Unterfahrt, Munich 2013 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | November 2, 1957 Germany |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation | Musician |
| Instrument(s) | Saxophone, flutes, bass clarinet |
| Website | www |
Gebhard Ullmann (born November 2, 1957) is a German jazz musician and composer.
At the age of six, Ullmann started to play the recorder and later classical flute. Since 1976 he studied a.o. with Herb Geller and Dave Liebman and at the University of Hamburg flute and saxophone. He also studied medicine from 1976 – 1982. During this time he worked with guitarist Andreas Willers and a trio with keyboards and vocals.
Since 1983 he has been living in Berlin, although he lived in both Berlin and New York City from 1999 to 2011. With Willers he started the quartet Out To Lunch in 1983 (later with Enrico Rava), the project Minimal Kidds (with Niko Schäuble, Trilok Gurtu, Glen Moore) and different trios with Steve Argüelles, Marvin Smitty Smith and Phil Haynes.
In 1991 he began his project Tá Lam (up to ten woodwinds plus accordion) that toured worldwide and released 4 CDs that made it to the top-of-the-year lists in many magazines all over the world including a five star review by John Ephland in Down Beat. 1993 Soul Note founder Giovanni Bonandrini invited him to start his project Basement Research in NYC. Originally a quartet with Ellery Eskelin (later Tony Malaby), Drew Gress and Phil Haynes, later it became a quintet with Steve Swell, Julian Argüelles, John Hebert (later Pascal Niggenkemper) and Gerald Cleaver and released seven CDs.
Some of the other projects Ullmann led or co-led and composed music for are:
Gebhard Ullmann also works as a composer and wrote music for different chamber music ensembles including three string quartets and several solo pieces for woodwind instruments, violin, piano.
He also wrote several larger works for classical orchestra and a new score for the movie 'Berliner Stilleben' from 1929 by László Moholy-Nagy for the BuJazzO plus Choir as part of the project 'Klingende Utopien - 100 Jahre Bauhaus'.
In 2021 he wrote his first symphony entitled 'Symphonische Verwebungen for Orchestra, Voice, Piano and Percussion' and together with composer Udo Agnesens the 25-minute work 'Tá Lam' based on his cycle from the early 1990s.
Currently he is working on a cycle of compositions entitled 'Modules for Orchestra' with No. 1-7 being finished.
His 61-minute work 'Impromptus und Interationen' was released in 2024 by the Viennese label Kairos_(record_label).
The String Quartet No.1 was released 2025 by Challenge Records (1994) in the Netherlands.
All of his compositions are distributed by Universal Edition, Vienna.
In 2024 Ullmann released his 70th CD as a leader or co-leader. As a sideman he works in the orchestras of Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii, German pianist Hannes Zerbe and drummer Günter Sommer . He was a member of projects such as The Silent Jazz Ensemble, Chris Dahlgren's Lexicon, the Berlin-based Die Elefanten (produced by Teo Macero), Günter Lenz’s Springtime, the Scott DuBois Quartet and many others.
He has also worked with Paul Bley, Keith Tippett, Frank Gratkowski, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, the Ensemble Les Percussions de Guinée, William Parker, Herb Robertson, Bob Moses, Bobby Previte, Lauren Newton, Andrew Cyrille, Sylvie Courvoisier, Willem Breuker, Rita Marcotulli, Dieter Glawischnig, Tom Rainey, Ivo Papazov, Sergei Starostin, Alexey Kruglov, Beñat Achiary, Frank Möbus, Tyshawn Sorey and the actor Otto Sander.
Ullmann received the Julius Hemphill Composition Award (1999) in two categories, one of the first SWR Jazz Awards (together with Andreas Willers in 1987), The German Phonoacademy Award (1983), many awards by the city of Berlin including the first Berlin Jazz Award in 2017. [1] [2] The second CD of his Tá Lam project was nominated best CD of the year by the German Schallplattenkritik and many of his CDs made the best-of-the-year list in magazines and newspapers worldwide including the New York City Jazz Record and the Down Beat magazine (The Clarinet Trio 1999, Final Answer 2002, The Bigband Project 2004, New Basement Research 2006, Poetry in Motion 2008, News? No News 2010, Tá Lam 11 – Mingus! 2011, Hat And Shoes 2015, Impromptus and Other Short Works 2019, Das Kondensat 2 2021). [3] The CD Transatlantic received the Choc of the French Jazz Magazine. Since 2005 Ullmann was listed in the Down Beat critics poll, lately in several categories. [4] In 2022 he received the German Jazz Award in the category woodwinds.
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