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, listen here on this website, Spotify and iTunes.

Manfred Schoof turned 85 on April 6, 2021. We say: Happy Birthday!

Schoof is one of the most important jazz musicians in this country, also known as "the great romantic among the jazz avant-gardists working in Germany".

One of the pioneers of free jazz in Europe, he was called "the fast one" for a while because of his runs on the trumpet. However, the "Kaputtspiel phase" in the 60s was not his cup of tea. Schoof's work is consistently characterized by a compositional approach, ranging from his two quintets, his New Jazz Trio, his longstanding duo with Rainer Brüninghaus to a trumpet concerto for the Berlin Philharmonic and several TV scores, including "Die Sendung mit der Maus".

Schoof comes from Magdeburg, but the focus of his artistic work has been Cologne since 1958. He studied at the Musikhochschule with the New Music composer Bernd-Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), and later taught trumpet and jazz history there.

The conversation with Manfred Schoof took place on March 3, 2021.
The place of the conversation was the Stadtgarten Lounge, above the club "Jaki". Jaki Liebezeit (1938-2017) - for most people his name is associated with the rock group Can - was the drummer of the epoch-making album "Voices" of the Manfred Schoof Quintet, 1965.