Jens Düppe

Jens Düppe is "one of the most innovative representatives of improvised music in Germany" (Jazzzeitung). He constantly creates new projects and multi - diciplinary artistic encounters In 2019 he received the WDR Jazz Prize. In 2018 his album "Dancing Beauty" was nominated for the ECHO (best percussionist national).

Besides his remarkable multi-instrumental solo project “ego_D”, as composer and bandleader of the Jens Düppe quartet he has released six albums, including two live LPs (2023 jazz-on-vinyl, 2019 Neuklang). The album ANIMA also exists for Big Band and was performed with the Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu. He also founded the freely improvising electronic duo NEOFOBIC together with the Bulgarian pianist Dimitar Bodurov.

Between 2011 and 2021 Düppe has directed and curated improvisational concert series like „Kommunikation 9“ (www.kommunikation9.de) and BLIND DATE(www.blind-date-music.com). Düppe has received composition commissions for the festival “ACHT Brücken - Musik für Köln,” for the European Church Music Festival in Schwäbisch Gmünd and for the Böll Foundation in Berlin. He was a jury member and teacher for the national German youth award "Jugend jazzt" and the German youth big band "Bundesjazzorchester". Düppe also works with the German radio big bands from Frankfurt and Hamburg and the Brussels Jazz Orchestra.

In the educational field Düppe has created a school project for children and young people with the improvisation cycle "lifecycle of a star". The aim is to bring improvisation without the limits and a musical style. With this project Düppe also worked as an external teacher at the MHMK (Macromedia University) in Cologne. In the area of percussion playing, Düppe developed a general summary for percussion which serves as a basis for learning this instrument. Düppe has worked for the GOETHE Institute on all five continents with changing occupations and projects.

Jens Düppe is originally from Schwäbisch Gmünd in Southern Germany. He received piano lessons as a young child and began learning drums at the age of ten. He studied jazz at the music academies in Weimar, Amsterdam and New York City until 2002. Düppe was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (BuJazzO) for a long time. In 2003 Albert Mangelsdorff brought him into the Franco-German Jazz Ensemble and then worked with Düppe in the Mangelsdorf-Dauner Quintet.

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