Today is Ulrich Gumpert’s 80th birthday.

Today is Ulrich Gumpert’s 80th birthday.
We first played together in the mid-nineties, shortly after I moved to Berlin, on the initiative of bassist Matthias Bauer, who invited us both to play in a trio.
I remember the first rehearsals in Uli’s apartment, right across from the Berliner Ensemble, in the middle of the city. The house had been sold to an investor who wanted to renovate it luxuriously, as it was in the best residential area. Ulrich was the last stubborn resident, although it was getting uncomfortable after the landlords tried all clean and dirty tricks to get rid of him, but we were able to rehearse in his apartment without any problems. The apartment was on the mezzanine floor, and occasionally Thomas Brasch and other friends would walk by the window and have a little chat during our rehearsal breaks. 
Gradually Ulrich asked me to play with more and more of his bands. First in a quartet with Luten Petrowsky and Klaus Koch, then at the Jazzfest Berlin in 1999 with the Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band as a replacement for Baby Sommer, who was unavailable.
But of course I had known Ulrich and his music for much longer, through a solo concert that Günter Christmann had organized with him in Hannover and a “secret” duo concert with Baby Sommer in a small club, the “Fledermaus”, which the GDR superiors were not allowed to know about. It was still a couple of years until the fall of the wall.
In 2006 we recorded our first CD with the Ulrich Gumpert Quartet for Intakt Records, followed by a second CD and two records with the new Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band on the jazzwerkstatt label. 
Next Sunday we will celebrate Ulrich’s 80th birthday with a concert at Industriesalon Schöneweide, of course with my old buddy Jan Roder on double bass and for the first time Matthias Schubert on saxophone.
I’m really looking forward to that.

(The photo below was taken in 2014 during the recording session for the second CD for Intakt records A New One, at Hard Studios Winterthur. We had a private concert there after the session and Irène Schweizer came to listen to us.)