Cologne Jazzweek: SCHMID’s HUHN – the cologne songbook

Stefan Karl Schmid (saxophone/clarinet) Leonhard Huhn (saxophone/clarinet) Stefan Schönegg (bass) Fabian Arends (drums)

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The quartet Schmid’s Huhn has been around for more than 13 years, featuring the namesake Stefan Karl Schmid and Leonhard Huhn on tenor and alto saxophone, plus clarinets, and a rhythm section featuring Stefan Schönegg (bass) and Fabian Arends (drums). Stylistically, the music can be situated at the intersection of post-bop and neo-cool, a space that also incorporates jazz avant-garde and contemporary improvisational music. In their playing, the musicians focus on structural processes and the improvisational transformation of prepared material, which is treated with energy and emotion.
Together with the Cologne Jazz Conference, Schmid’s Huhn has launched an unusual project: a “Cologne Songbook”, which brings together 111 pieces by Cologne-based composers. From this collection, the quartet has selected several pieces to reinterpret and reshape as improvisational artists—with the aim of placing these titles in ever-changing musical contexts and revealing both the vitality of the Cologne scene and its international appeal.

Further information

Venue:

Stadtgarten

The first concert in the newly built Stadtgarten concert hall in the mid-1980s launched a program unlike anything Germany had seen: an independent, artistically driven concert series devoted to contemporary improvised music. It was guided neither by attendance figures nor by public subsidies, yet it guaranteed musicians minimum fees and was run on professional terms. The conditions mattered just as much: an acoustically optimized, street-level concert space offering a strong setting for audiences and performers alike. Operations were financed through the adjoining hospitality business, the Stadtgarten restaurant and beer garden, a model that drew attention well beyond Germany.

Today the Stadtgarten Köln ranks among Europe's internationally recognized venues for contemporary and improvised music. The American magazine Down Beat features it regularly in its listings; it has received Germany's federal APPLAUS venue program award several times, including "Venue of the Year" in 2016, followed by the German Jazz Prize in the same category in 2022. More than 400 events across the full spectrum of contemporary music now take place there each year. Its international standing rests above all on the high proportion of demanding, experimental programming.

A programming mission of this kind depends on reliable public support. The venue's 30th anniversary in September 2016 opened that prospect: through a partnership between the City of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, programming work is being substantially strengthened, and from 2017 onward the Stadtgarten Köln is being developed step by step into a "European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music" – with the goal of becoming one of Europe's leading music centers.

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