Schmid's Huhn

In the organizer's words:

SCHMID's HUHN "one of the most interesting bands in the jazz metropolis of Cologne" (Jazzpodium) has cultivated its very own band sound in recent years, which deals with the combination of free improvisation and composition in many different ways. After their debut LP in 2014 and "Golden Spheres" (2018), the live album "Layers (live)" followed in 2022.

The band, led by saxophonists Stefan Karl Schmid and Leonhard Huhn, performed five consecutive evenings at the traditional Cologne club Subway. The musical isolation of the previous months is impressively expressed here and seems like a liberating blow as an entry into a new creative period.

Stylistically eclectic, but sonically coherent and with a broad palette of sound colors, 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 bustling 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 concoction. The compositions are well thought-out, dark and full of energy at the same time.

With Layers (live), Schmid's Huhn creates an idiosyncratic, multi-layered jazz that looks back respectfully and at the same time reaches for the future with great determination.

www.schmidshuhn.de