Jazz at the Alte Feuerwache | BERLIN 21

Line-up:

• Lionel Haas: piano
• Torsten Zwingenberger: drums
• Martin Lillich: bass

Musically, the band once again embarks on a varied journey around the world, featuring Latin and Afro grooves as well as funk and soul beats. Swinging bebop, dreamy jazz ballads and a musette waltz are just a few of the stops the band makes on “Three!”. The blues remains a constant companion – a cornerstone of jazz, a leitmotif that flashes up time and again in various guises. All the songs are original compositions by the band members.

Drummer Torsten Zwingenberger has lived in Moabit since 1980, the centrally located Berlin district that used to have the postcode 1000 Berlin 21. It is here, amidst Moabit’s colourful diversity, that he has founded many of his legendary bands, including BERLIN 21. He is one of the most dynamic figures on the German jazz scene and is the driving force behind the band. His schedule includes over a hundred concerts a year, international tours and numerous projects both as a bandleader and as a sideman. Even in his mid-twenties, Zwingenberger was already collaborating with jazz legends such as Buddy Tate, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison and Joe Pass. Furthermore, with ‘Drumming 5.1’, he has developed a sensational drumming technique, in which he expands the classic drum kit to include a wide range of percussion instruments and plays them with artistic precision using all four limbs.

The pianist Lionel Haas, born in Bonn in 1971, has been playing the piano since the age of nine. Following a four-year stay in Washington DC, he has been based in Berlin since 1999 and, alongside his trio, quintet and octet formations, works as one of the most sought-after sidemen on the Berlin jazz scene. He is equally at home in many jazz styles and consistently proves himself to be a highly virtuosic soloist with a distinctive blues feel.

Martin Lillich, a self-taught electric bassist, studied double bass at the Berlin University of the Arts under Klaus Stoll. He also plays a 6-string acoustic fretless bass. Musically at home in classical, Caribbean, jazz, Balkan and Bosporus music, the New Klezmer scene and flamenco. Lillich is an integral part of the Berlin and German jazz scenes, both as a soloist and as a sideman. From 1995 to 2005, he was a lecturer at the Hans Eisler School of Music. From 2003 onwards, he was bandleader with Pompduck & Circumstance for several years. He has been working at the Global Music Academy since 2010.