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.

Happy Birthday! Hans Lüdemann celebrates his 60th birthday today (14.09.21).

After attending the conservatory in Hamburg, he came to Cologne in 1982 to study jazz piano at the Musikhochschule. In 1990 he graduates with his first jazz concert exam. Within 10 years he succeeds in a big career leap: In 1976 he attends his first jazz concert in Hamburg: the Jan Garbarek Quartet. In 1986 he plays with Garbarek for seven weeks in Southeast Asia, both as members of Eberhard Weber's band.

In three and a half decades he has preserved several long-term projects: his groups Trio Ivoire and Rism have existed for over 20 years; he maintains a lively exchange with French musicians. For a long time, too, he has been one of the few jazz musicians to deal with microtonality, i.e. the subdivision of the octave not into half-, but into quarter-tone steps - unusual for a pianist.

Lüdemann is currently a scholarship holder at the Villa Massimo in Rome, and during the time of the interview he was at the Tarabya Academy in Istanbul. He sees himself not only as a jazz pianist, but also as a composer. He is currently writing an opera for the Cologne Opera House (2022).

The conversation with Hans Lüdemann took place on March 14, 2021 in the Stadtgarten concert hall, after the online concert "Past & Present - The Music of Hans Lüdemann".