Tom Berkmann

He grew up in a small village in the beautiful Bavarian Alps, in the middle of Nowhere, a place so boring and quiet that the cows’ mooing and the churchbells were the only musical excitement in his early childhood. When he first heard his older sisters’ record collection – groups like Jimi Hendrix, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana – Tom’s life had changed. He started growing his hair and picked up the guitar, started playing along with records and experimenting with sound and effects. Soon Tom got into Jazz Music and after playing jazz guitar for a while, he eventually found his true love as a young teenager: The Contrabass.

Still being in high school Tom started studying Jazz Bass at the Richard-Strauss- Conservatory in Munich with Paulo Cardoso. After graduating from school he moved to Berlin to study at the Jazz Institute with Greg Cohen, Kurt Rosenwinkel and John Hollenbeck. For the past two years he was a DAAD scholar (German Academic Exchange Service) and studied at Manhattan School of Music in New York with Jay Anderson. He recently graduated with a Master of Music degree.

Tom has toured with various groups in Germany, the United States, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Slovakia and Romania. He was a semifinalist in the Jazz Competition of the International Double Bass Convention “Bass 2010″ in Berlin. With the “Tobias Meinhart Quintet” he won the First Prize and Audience Award at the Getxo Jazz Festival in Spain. Together with The Major Minors and Cherilyn MacNeill he received the German Academy Award for Best Filmscore for the movie “Oh Boy” in 2013. The same year they won the German Critic’s Award for Best Soundtrack at the Berlin Film Festival Berlinale.

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