Jazz at Green Room: SCHMID’s HUHN

SCHMID's HUHN "one of the most interesting bands in the jazz capital Cologne", according to Jazzpodium, has cultivated its own band sound in recent years, which deals with the connection between free improvisation and composition in a multi-layered way.

Their debut LP in 2014 and "Golden Spheres" (2018) were followed by the live album "Layers (live)" in 2022. 
On five consecutive evenings, the band around the two saxophonists Stefan Karl Schmid and Leonhard Huhn performed at Cologne's traditional club Subway. The musical isolation they had been in for the months before gave way here in an impressive way and had the effect of a liberating blow as an entry into a new creative period: stylistically eclectic, but sonically coherent and with a wide range of timbres, the band produces music of highly intuitive interplay and virtuoso individuality. SCHMID's HUHN draws on the diverse backgrounds and influences of the band's busy members, combining post-bop, cool jazz, 20th century chromaticism, avant-garde jazz, post-punk and, for the first time, electronic sounds into a kind of crazy, acoustic brew. The compositions are thoughtful, at the same time dark and full of energy. On "Layers (live)", the quartet creates a stubborn, multi-layered jazz that looks back respectfully while reaching for the future with great determination.

Schmid's Huhn has come to the fore in recent years through a number of competitions and performances, including winning the composition and soloist prize at the Tremplin Jazz Festival in Avignon (FR) or being nominated several times for the German Jazz Prize. Leonhard Huhn and Stefan Karl Schmid are also both winners of the Förderpreis of the City of Cologne.