Tonight at the Loft, Cologne: Franz Hautzinger, trumpet

Franz Hautzinger is not known for giving himself an easy time. His musical career – first inspired by a Hannibal Marvin Peterson concert – is littered with dead-ends and silences. He has reinvented himself many times: biographers beware.

Born in 1963, Franz studied Jazz at what is now the Art University in Graz from 1981 to 1983, until lip palsy forced him to take a six-year break from trumpeting. After moving to Vienna he returned to the instrument, exploring its possibilities in his own, un-academic way. He entered the orbit of Christoph Cech and Christian Mühlbacher, and played in the big band Nouvelle Cuisine (well, it was the Eighties…) and the octet Striped Roses. A ten-month stay in London provided further ideas and contacts, amongst them Kenny Wheeler, Henry Lowther, John Russel, and Steve Noble.

Franz and Jacek Kochan play Warsaw in 2006 – from the CD One-Eyed Horse.

Franz’s decision to avoid electronic sound sources but to still comprehend the development of digital music on the trumpet – a quarter-tone trumpet purchased in 1997 – was decisive. His sensational solo CD Gomberg (2000), with its unique sound-world, placed him at the front line of the improvisational avant-garde. Collaborations and CDs with Derek Bailey and the AMM veterans Keith Rowe and John Tilbury quickly followed. Franz Hautzinger has taught at the Vienna Music University since 1989, and is a member of the Berlin ensemble Zeitkratzer.

A globetrotter whose unmistakeable musical signature is known from Vienna to Beirut to Tokyo, Franz Hautzinger has shown that in the right hands, an instrument can always be reinvented.