CJS: Benjamin Schäfer Quartett

In the organizer's words:

An event as part of the Cologne Jazz Supporters composition competition

Benjamin Schaefer (born 1981) studied jazz piano and composition at the HfMT Cologne with Frank Wunsch, Hans Lüdemann, John Taylor and Joachim Ullrich. He was a member of the Landesjazzorchester NRW and the Bundesjazzorchester (BuJazzO). Tours have taken him to 27 countries on 4 continents. He has played hundreds of club and festival concerts, many of them with his own projects Benjamin Schaefer Trio (2004-14), Expressway Sketches (2008-21), Quiet Fire (2014-19), Hive Mind (2018-19), Stone Flowers (2020- ) and Solo (2022- ). The work of these projects is documented on twelve albums, which have received excellent reviews both nationally and internationally and have been released on his own label for the records since 2018. Live performances have been recorded by all German radio stations. In his concert series "open.fundus", he has been looking at the musical wealth of the city of Hamburg through jazz glasses with changing European guest musicians since 2019. His trio won the audience prize and the prize for best composition at the "Concours du Jazz Européen" in Avignon in 2007. In the same year, it received the "Niedersächsischer Jazzpreis". From 2010 to 2013, the trio was supported by Bayer Kultur as part of the stART program. In 2011, Benjamin was awarded the Horst and Gretl Will Scholarship for Jazz and Improvised Music by the City of Cologne. In 2019 he received the New German Composition Prize. He has also received numerous public and private grants for album productions and composition commissions. In addition to his artistic activities, Benjamin Schaefer has worked as a lecturer for jazz piano at the HfMT Cologne since 2009 and was a member of the board of the German Jazz Union from 2013 to 2022. He has also set himself the goal of making his profession climate-neutral by 2030.