Author / Michael Griener

I’ve been playing with Jan Roder for over 30 years, and if I look over at the bassist at one of my concerts, there’s a good chance it’s Jan. Bill Meyer has now interviewed Jan and me about our beginnings in Berlin in the nineties, which has just been published in the new issue of…

This was because the author had confused her in my then short biography with the underrated but less well-known saxophonist Thomas Schweizer. I was a bit embarrassed at the time and realized that I’d have to play with Irene at some point to set the record straight.  Fortunately, a few years later I had the…

Today is the 69th birthday of Gerold Genssler. Most people know him as the maker of excellent strings, mostly for double bass (I think they are currently sold under the name Sonores). For me, however, he is above all the person who lured me to move to Berlin in 1994, which in retrospect was one…

Today is the 80th birthday of Günter Christmann. I can honestly say that without him I would not be the musician I am today.I will be eternally grateful to him for taking me under his wing after I came, almost by accident, to a solo concert by Evan Parker that he organized when I was 15. I…

In the dark ages before the Internet, I could occasionally catch the tail end of a long-gone practice: Accompanying musicians on the road as part of the hired rhythm section. This gave me the opportunity to play with the likes of Mal Waldron, Benny Bailey, Mark Murphy, Spike Robinson, Lenny Spivak and a few others…