Hartmut was born in 1961 in a small village in the backwoods, the Taunus hills in Germany near the Lorelei rock. He started on guitar at age 15 and switched immediately to bassguitar when he heard a Stanley Clarke record. Though he had just his brother's "Hoefner" guitar for practicing, he tried to tune the strings as low as possible, to get a bass sound. He didn't have any clue, how a bass was tuned. He just tried to make it sound somehow looow...
After two years of saving all his money, he started off to the next bigger city to acquire a Japanese Jazzbass copy called: "Marvin", just for the beautiful black, red-wrapped ends, nylon flatwounds. Immediately he was hired by a guitar playing classmate, Udo (not John) Meyer, for the school Rock band "BREAK" (still existing after 30 years), just because he was impressed by those black strings, for playing Rolling Stones songs. He hated these songs from the bottom of his heart, because he wanted to be, uhh, a jazz musician, which he thought of to be so cool.
Later he indeed found some people to play jazz, and nowadays he loves to play "Brown Sugar" and "Jumping Jack Flash" (but struggles still every day with songs like "Giant Steps" or "Donna Lee"). Working as a musical theater musician for "Line One", "Little Shop Of Horrors" and "Personals" widened his music view and allowed him to pay his rent for two years.
He played all kinds of Jazz standards in many bands, won the "First Bass International Bass Magazine" award in the jazz category (finalist in the Fusion category together with Les July) in 1985, auditioned in 1992 at the Frankfurt Music Fair for a Berklee scholarship, which he got, but decided to stay in Germany playing with his first own band "Hartmut Hillmann Eclecticband" and later "Zabriskie Point". The latter was quite successful with two CD releases (the second produced by Mallet virtuoso David Friedman) and an Africa tour in 1995, playing in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. Influenced by the African grooves and musicians he decided to build a new band: "Illicit Poetry" (the songs You can listen to here), playing his original compositions, rehearsing and recording in Tuscany in 1998 and 1999 resulting in two CD releases "Eclecticjazz" and "Uncivilized". Though the record industry showed some interest, the band was never signed... and Hartmut was pissed like hell...
Since 1990 he works with young peolpe with special needs, teaching them all kinds of instruments, rap and vocals and coaching the handicapped band "SELF" .
Since 2000 he works as a drummer for the Japanese R&B band "Ushi-Tora", since 2006 he collaborated with "MBAF"(mikeburn and friends) featuring the scottish singer Kate Cassidy.
Some more maybe or maybe not so useful links:
Hartmut endorses the best basses in the universe: FODERA
Get "Illicit Poetry" Music @ iTunes Store
Download Illicit Poetry music videos here
Hartmut's German Website
Hartmut's Urban Folk Funk Band "Illicit Poetry" Website (in English)
Hartmut's Japanese R&B Band's Website (in German & Japanese)
Hartmut's collaboration with "MBAF" (mikeburn and friends) featuring Scottish Singer Kate Cassidy
Hartmut's new collaboration with "Dgroove" (Acoustic Funk) featuring Singer Michael T. Binder
Hartmut's other myspace.com site