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Manfred Schoof

Manfred Schoof was born in Magdeburg, Germany, and studied music in Kassel and Cologne, where one of his teachers of the big band leader Kurt Edelhagen. Schoof performed on Edelhagen's radio program and toured with Gunter Hampel. In the 1960s he started a free jazz band with Alexander von Schlippenbach and Gerd Dudek which became the basis for Manfred Schoof Orchestra. From 1969 to 1971 he was a member of the George Russell Orchestra. He has also worked with Jasper Van't Hof and the Globe Unity Orchestra. He composed classical music for Berlin Philharmonic. His group has participated in performances of Die Soldaten, an operatic work by the contemporary composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann. He was featured in a profile on composer Graham Collier in the 1985 Channel 4 documentary 'Hoarded Dreams.'

Since 2007 he has been chairman of the Union Deutscher Jazzmusiker. He has been a professor in Cologne since 1990.

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Liner Notes

Heiner Stadler: Brains on Fire

Read "Heiner Stadler: Brains on Fire" reviewed by Howard Mandel


Brains on Fire fuels reflection on the past and response in the present. These eight extraordinary extended tracks, recorded in unusual conjunctions of master jazz improvisers instigated by composer/pianist Heiner Stadler for sessions held from 1966 through 1974, are alive with the passions of that era celebrating large, original works stretching the bounds of even the most ambitious music come before. As Stadler and his cadre of fully collaborative, creative interpreters brought immense smarts, skills and sensibilities besides ...

Album Review

Heiner Stadler: Brains on Fire

Read "Brains on Fire" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff


Heiner Stadler è nome pressoché sconosciuto se non agli addetti ai lavori o a qualche curioso appassionato jazzofilo. Nasce nel 1942 a Lessen in Polonia, cresce ad Amburgo dove studia pianoforte, armonia e composizione al conservatorio, per poi trasferirsi nel 1965 a New York. Qui intesse una serie di relazioni con importanti musicisti dal background assai variegato (si va sa Benny Golson a Barre Phillips, da Joe Chambers a John Gilmore e Joe Farrell, da Dee Dee Bridgewater a Thad ...

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Extended Analysis

Heiner Stadler: Brains on Fire

Read "Heiner Stadler: Brains on Fire" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


Heiner StadlerBrains on FireLabor Records2012One of the most exciting reissues of the first quarter of 2012 is composer and pianist Heiner Stadler's pioneering Brains on Fire, originally released in 1973. The two-CD reissue adds three lengthy, previously unreleased tracks and informative and well-researched liner notes by critic Howard Mandel. Interestingly, Stadler occupies the piano chair only on five of the eight pieces, recorded over a seven-year span in a ...

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Album Review

Manfred Schoof: Resonance

Read "Resonance" reviewed by John Kelman


For every artist that has achieved international attention via the exposure of ECM Records, there are countless others who seem to have been lost beneath the cracks. German trumpeter Manfred Schoof, who recorded three superb albums for the ECM-affiliated JAPO label in the 1970s, was a member of the freewheeling Globe Unity Orchestra alongside Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Kenny Wheeler, and Albert Mangelsdorff, all of whom went on to greater acclaim. Resonance collects Scales (1976), Light Lines (1978), and four ...

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Album Review

Manfred Schoof: European Echoes

Read "European Echoes" reviewed by Jay Collins


The very first release on the German free jazz label FMP, recently reissued by Atavistic as part of its Unheard Music Series, was trumpeter Manfred Schoof’s European Echoes. In June of 1969, Schoff convened some of the leading lights of the emerging European free music scene for this radio project, heard here in its entirety. What is striking is the density of the instrumentation (consisting of three trumpets, three saxophonists, three pianists, three bassists, two drummers and trombonist Paul Rutherford), ...

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Album Review

Manfred Schoof: European Echoes

Read "European Echoes" reviewed by Derek Taylor


The cast of European Echoes is incredibly formidable, representating a veritable dream orchestra populated by youthful incarnations of many of free improvisation's leading lights. But sadly the stilted sonics sometimes stand in the way of undiluted enjoyment of what’s transpiring. Bailey’s amplified and excoriating strings are at times the only individual voice discernable. Bennink and Favre blend together into a tumultuous tidal wave of percussion and the horns frequently crash against the undulating reef of pianos and basses in a ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Live In Bremen

MIG Music
2022

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Brains on Fire

Labor Records
2012

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Resonance

ECM Records
2009

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European Echoes

Atavistic Worldwide
2003

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Crossroad

Intercord
1992

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