Music journalist, author and sound artist Michael Rüsenberg invites jazz greats to an interesting exchange at "Speak Like A Child." The title of the series goes back to the title track of the legendary Herbie Hancock album from 1968 and is a reference to the musical primary color of the Stadtgarten. Now the popular interview series is also available as a podcast, to be heard here on this website, Spotify and iTunes.

Dieter Manderscheid, born on March 31, 1956 in Trier, is one of the founding members of the Initiative Kölner Jazz Haus e.V. He also lived in Cologne for four decades - but at the same time never left Trier. The time of the interview with him (March 29, 2022) was a symbolic one: he had just signed the apartment transfer protocol, after which he set off back to his hometown.

Dieter Manderscheid has, it is fair to say, left a prominent footprint in the cathedral city, as a bass player in several contexts, perhaps even more lasting as a bass teacher. One can find several intonation-assured bassists in the city, of whom one can also assume: they were trained by Dieter Manderscheid.

In 1980 he came to Cologne to continue a study of the double bass which he had begun in Saarbrücken. His name can be found on numerous recordings thereafter, with Wittek-Kaiser-Manderscheid, Thomas Heberer, Tome XX, Peter Brötzmann, Klaus König, Sebastian Sternal and many others. In 1991 he began teaching at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt am Main, and in 1994 at the Hochschule für Tanz und Musik in Cologne. From 2002 to 2022 he held a professorship for jazz bass there. His successor is one of his students: Robert Landfermann.

The conversation with him begins - without a concert in the "Past & Present" series being the occasion - nevertheless with "The Music of Dieter Manderscheid": his role in it as composer and bassist. And it dwells for quite some time on the technique, aesthetics and pedagogy of this instrument, about which Manderscheid can give information like no other. The conversation took place on March 29, 2022 in the club "Jaki", below the Stadtgarten.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)