Martin Kunzler (born 29 April 1947) is a German jazz bassist and music journalist. He gained particular fame through his rororo Jazz-Lexikon published by Rowohlt Verlag, which is now considered the standard German-language work on this musical genre.
Kunzler was born in Lörrach as the youngest of six siblings and went to the Hans-Thoma-Gymnasium Lörrach and the Wirtschaftsgymnasium . From 1960, he took double bass lessons with Chester Gill, and from 1964 he studied double bass with Michel Delannois as well as music theory with Gerd Watkinson in Basel. After his marriage and the birth of his son Claudio, Kunzler completed a traineeship as newspaper editor at the Verlagshaus Jaumann in Lörrach from 1966 to 1968, after which he was editor and feature correspondent of the Schwarzwälder Bote until 1969. In 1967/68, he also held a teaching position at the Pädagogische Hochschule Lörrach in the subjects Double Bass and Workshop for Neue Musik.
Kunzler was also active in avant-garde musical projects with the Tübingen ensemble of Heinz Kunzler and Wolfgang Hamm and the ensembles around Percy Gerd Watkinson. Numerous concerts and tours as a jazz musician followed, among others with Oscar Klein, Raymond Droz, Ewald Heidepriem, Hans Deyssenroth , Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Albert Nicholas, Milt Buckner, Attila Zoller, Stu Martin, Jean-Louis Chautemps, Pony Poindexter and above all for many years with the American arranger Bob Carter.
From 1970 to 1972, Kunzler was head of the feature section of the Westfalen-Blatt in Bielefeld; during this time he also published his first book as co-author alongside Bernhard Conz with the title Gerettet auf dem Steinway-Flügel. After an interlude at the Badische Zeitung in Freiburg im Breisgau, in 1973 he took over the PR department of BASF Records Musikproduktion in Hamburg and later in Mannheim. There he mainly looked after the record labels Harmonia Mundi and Musik Produktion Schwarzwald, one specialising in early music and the other in jazz. [1]
Kunzler also worked as a producer, not in jazz but in the classical field (and there mainly as a specialist for modern and early music). As an editor, he has designed many projects in this field; important permanent partners were Carl Orff, Gary Bertini, Ireneu Segarra i Malla and Peter Michael Hamel.
After BASF's withdrawal from the music business in 1976, he worked as a freelancer for record companies such as Deutsche Grammophon (Production archive), EMI, Wergo, Teldec (The Old Work) or Bellaphon, WDR, ORF and the Deutsche Welle, Schott Music and newspapers or magazines such as the Neue Musikzeitung (nmz, Bosse Verlag), Das Orchester , Melos, Musica, Musik und Bildung, Fonoforum, Stereo, Disk (Holland), the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt , numerous daily newspapers and popular magazines up to Playboy .
In 1977 he joined the Boehringer Mannheim as press spokesman, (later Roche Diagnostics), but retained his freelance activities as author and producer. From 1980 onwards, his work for the first edition of the Rowohlt-Jazzlexikon moved into the foreground. It was published in 1988, followed by various supplemented or unchanged new editions and a completely revised new version in 2002.
Kunzler also collaborates to the Neue Deutsche Biographie of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He has also been active in the field of museums, including essayistic contributions for exhibition catalogues and, in 2002, marketing for a major Jean Tinguely retrospective at the Kunsthalle Mannheim.
Wolf Dietrich Schneider is a German journalist, author and language critic.
Vitold Rek is a double bassist, composer and music educator. He studied classical double bass at the Academy of Music in Kraków when Krzysztof Penderecki was rector there. His playing "unites jazz influences with classical and East European folk elements", with a focus on live performance and composition.
Torsten de Winkel is a German musician, composer, and philosopher primarily active in the jazz, world music, fusion and electronic music genres. He is known as an electric and acoustic guitarist but also records and performs on electric sitar, keyboards, and percussion. Since the 1990s, he has initiated and participated in several platforms aimed at combining the arts and sustainability.
Günter Lenz is a German jazz bassist and composer.
Rolf Schweizer was a German composer, choirmaster and church music director, who was based primarily at Pforzheim. Schweizer was part of the movement Neues Geistliches Lied, and his compositions, several of which appear in the Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch (EG), were heavily influenced by contemporary secular music, especially jazz.
Natias Neutert is a German artist, author, poet, orator, and translator who lives in Hamburg and Berlin.
Peter Janssens was a German musician and composer who wrote and performed incidental music for several theatres, and songs and musicals of the genre Neues Geistliches Lied, a pioneer of Sacropop. He worked at a German theatre in Buenos Aires, set several works by Ernesto Cardenal to music and composed in 1992 a passion music, in memory of 500 years after the European invasion in Latin America.
Tilo Medek, originally Müller-Medek, was a German classical composer, musicologist and music publisher. He grew up in East Germany, but was inspired by the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. He composed radio plays and incidental music. His setting of Lenin's Decree on Peace led to restrictions, and after he showed solidarity with the expatriated Wolf Biermann, he also had to move to the West, where he composed an opera Katharina Blum based on Heinrich Böll's novel, and worked in education. He received international awards from 1967 on.
Wolfram Röhrig was a German pianist, composer and conductor, who also worked under the alias Wolf Droysen. A jazz pianist, he was the director of music departments of the broadcasters Hessischer Rundfunk and Süddeutscher Rundfunk, responsible for light music and jazz. With the choir Nürnberg Lehrergesangverein from Nuremberg, Germany, he performed and recorded works such as Te Deum compositions by Anton Bruckner and Heinrich Sutermeister, and Max Reger's Der 100. Psalm.
Kurt Honolka was a German musicologist, journalist, and music and theatre critic. He is known as a translator of the librettos of Czech operas into German, such as Smetana's Dalibor and Janáček's Osud.
Wolfgang Boetticher was a German musicologist and longtime lecturer at the University of Göttingen.
Horst Seeger, pseudonyme Horst Schell, was a German musicologist, music critic, dramaturg, librettist and opera director.
Clemens Höslinger is an Austrian historian, music journalist and librarian.
Ann-Helena Schlüter is a Swedish-German pianist, organist, composer and poet.
Norbert Linke is a German composer and musicologist.
Jo Thönes is a German percussionist, Jazz drummer and composer.
Werner Gustav Rudolf Gößling was a German conductor, Choir director, composer and university lecturer. He was chief conductor of the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Halle and the Robert Franz Singakademie in Halle. In 1951, he was appointed General Music Director. From 1956 to 1958, he built up the first Chinese symphony orchestra in the European style.
Nathan "Noto" Notowicz was a German musicologist and composer.
Bert Noglik is a German jazz journalist and music critic.
Andre Asriel was an Austrian-German composer.
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