Burkhard Schmidt

Saxophon Player Burkhard Schmidt was born in 1966 in Stralsund, a town at the Baltic coast with view to the islands Rügen and Hiddensee.From early on, he had been fascinated by sounds, Grandmother’s songs, Father’s accordion and the music at church. At some time, however, self crafted flutes, pan sets and children’s harmonicas were not enough any longer and he starts to learn playing the clarinet. After short time he changes to alto saxophone. The preset career in the fire brigade’s brass band is dropped after listening to his first Jazz music. The parents had bought their moaning child Benny Water’s “Blue Waters” and hence spoiled him forever against the “hit parade of exaggerated popular music”. So it happened that he didn’t visit the “Stars of Folklore” in the civic hall but met Benny Waters in the elevator of a five star hotel in Fribourgh, Switzerland.But this happened a few years later. First a few people had to be convinced of the plans of studying Music at university: family, professional trainers, music teachers…the jury at University of Dresden for entrance examination (a few times).From 1988 onwards Burkhard Schmidt studies Jazz saxophone, has lessons in composition and playing the flute at the University “Carl- Maria- von- Weber” in Dresden. This is followed by workshops and master classes of David Liebmann, Karl Berger and Steve Lacy. Afterwards he plays in different bands and is mainly seen with the notorious “Rhythm and Blues” Trio. He produced the multimedia project for musicians, speakers and projections, plays on private exhibitions and meets musicians from Africa, Argentina, Vietnam and China. By now his sound fills great church halls, in which he even plays together with organ or alpenhorn. Burkhard Schmidt experiences playing with echo, reverberation, and acoustic and starts to emphasize the architecture of those special rooms on solo concerts. He experiments with laptop and effects and builds live electronics in his solo concerts.