Nils Kugelmann

Nils Kugelmann - Life ScoreCD / Vinyl / digitalNils Kugelmann double bassLuca Zambito pianoSebastian Wolfgruber drumsNils Kugelmann likes telling stories. That much is clear from the titles of his compositions...from the way he talks when he introduces them at concerts...and – naturally – from the music itself. ‘For me, making the connection between music and stories, feelings and situations is so important,’ says the bassist/ composer/ bandleader, now based in Berlin. ‘At concerts I consciously talk to the audience and go into the background of each piece in some detail. It’s something I enjoy. I can hardly imagine presenting music on stage without having this kind of communication.’ Above all, however, the music which Nils Kugelmann plays and composes has real urgency, strong energy and hypnotic power. As an artist he has broken through in a way that no other double bassist of the under-30 generation in Germany has done, in particular his way of making his instrument the central feature of his music. Immediately after completing his master's degree in 2022, Kugelmann launched his debut album ‘Stormy Beauty’ on ACT. German media called him a ‘bass berserker’ and a ‘mega-talent.’ Awards, sold-out concerts duly followed. Kugelmann has a core trio, but beyond that he is free to play in the contexts and styles he likes – first and foremost in a duo and quartet with pianist and composer Shuteen Erdenebaatar.There are so many dimensions to Kugelmann’s musical personality, something which the trio he leads with pianist Luca Zambito and drummer Sebastian Wolfgruber gives him the freedom to express. ‘Life Score’ is in many ways a further development and concentration of the qualities of the band and its leader. ‘Our first album was still from the Corona period. We hardly had a chance to play live and the studio recordings were the first real opportunity to try out the pieces,’ Kugelmann recalls. ‘With ”Life Score’ it's completely different. We have now played a lot of concerts and as a trio we have grown together and got closer. The pieces seem much more compact and concrete.’ ACT CEO and producer Andreas Brandis has played a significant role in this. The trio did try-outs of the new repertoire written by Nils Kugelmann over the course of several live concerts. This was followed by intensive, collective discussions about the selection of pieces, arrangements, sound and dynamics. This meant that the trio was able to go into the studio perfectly prepared and, together with their producer, concentrate on the finer details and find the ideal versions of the pieces for the album. Andreas Brandis says: ‘Nils Kugelmann is not only an incredible bassist, but above all a great songwriter. And precisely because his music is so concise and catchy, it was important to reduce the pieces to their essence.’ All the compositions on the album have a cinematic quality, they are like short films about the lives of their protagonists. These ‘life scores’ draw inspiration from experiences on tour, such as a visit to the Galapagos Islands, but also from moods inspired by balmy summer evenings, the scent of the night, or the incomparable experience of love. These stories are there compositions, in clear, present melodies, in the groovy, flowing rhythm of a homogenous-sounding trio and also in the naturalness of melodic music. Because Nils Kugelmann not only wants to tell stories. He also wants to be heard and understood – by a broad audience and also by listeners of his own generation. ‘Life Score’ is a complex and captivating blueprint, showing us a new kind of film-like Gen Z jazz.CreditsRecorded by Klaus Scheuermann, on September 24–25, 2024, at Soundfabrik in Berlin, Germany Mixed and mastered by Klaus ScheuermannCover art by Bernd Zimmer, “Cosmos”, 2003

Nils Kugelmann - Stormy BeautyCD / Vinyl / digitalNils Kugelmann bass Luca Zambito piano Sebastian Wolfgruber drums Berlin might well be considered widely as the creative hub of the German jazz scene, but in the deep south of the country there is another city where talented and promising musicians are finding new pathways in jazz. Among these, for example, are the Jazzrausch Bigband, vocalist Alma Naidu and guitarist Philipp Schiepek. They all hail from Munich. Bassist Nils Kugel-mann, born in 1996, is another new talent from the Bavarian capital. His ACT debut "Stormy Beauty" makes it clear why, al-ready at a young age, he is considered among the top German bass-players.As the album title implies, Nils Kugelmann's music concerns itself with some of the most important things which music can express: beauty, excitement and passion. There can be very few emerging musicians able to portray these emotions and states quite so convincingly, captivatingly and creatively as Kugelmann. He is an artist of quality and genuine promise, as suc-cesses such as the European Burghausen Young Jazz Prize 2023 at the Burghausen Jazz Week and the BMW Young Artist Jazz Award 2022 attest. Kugelmann has also recently won the renowned European Burghausen Young Jazz Prize 2023 at the Burghausen Jazz Week. His trio played pieces from the "Stormy Beauty" project, and part of the prize was to share the same programme with guitar legend and festival headliner Lee Ritenour, at the festival’s opening night gala concert. Kugelmann's music is persuasive and powerful, not least be-cause he is so much more than ‘just’ a bass player. He is a true all-rounder, a universal musician and composer. From an early age he tried out singing, clarinet, piano or synthesizer, and then mainly the bass. Even as a teenager, Kugelmann was both composing and improvising, hovering between academic music and pop, between acoustic and electronic music. He began his formal studies in music combining classical clarinet and composition, and wrote pieces for orchestra and even musicals which received performances in Munich. The focal point of this eclectic mix, however, was studying the bass with Henning Sieverts at the Munich Musikhochschule, and those studies have already given him a strong identity: he has been a first-call bass-player for several years, someone who gets the call whenever Munich colleagues are putting together a rhythm section. Indeed, his services have been called upon by luminaries like Benny Golson, Johannes Enders and Trio Elf. And yet this does not prevent Kugelmann from following other projects such as his duo with drummer Sebastian Wolfgruber...where he plays the piano, or the Lightville Duo alongside his partner, the equally talented pianist/composer Shuteen Erdenebaatar, originally from Mongolia.. in which he plays a very unusual instrument, the contra alto clarinet.It is, however, in his trio with Luca Zambito on piano and Sebastian Wolfgruber on drums that Kugelmann has found his true calling. "Stormy Beauty" demonstrates that with admi-rable clarity. All of the tracks here are written by him; his signa-ture as composer is unmistakable. Whether he is evoking a eu-phoric mood of departure in "Unexpected Love" and "About the Moment of Beginning", or tracing the path to finding one's own voice in the exuberant improvisations and crashing rhythms of "Finding Your Place, or showing a reverence and enthusiasm for nature in the hymn-like "Symphony for the Rain" and "Wild Leaves Falling", or intoning the powerful love song "Song for a Golden Blossom", there is no mistaking Kugelmann's outstanding qualities and unfailing instincts, his way of finding melodies and motifs which stick in the mind. His instrumental virtuosity frees up the double bass and even turns it into the dominant melodic instrument in a piano trio. Kugelmann gives every single note a sense of definitiveness and a feeling of expressiveness, even at the fastest tempo. And, above all, we hear a perfect account of the high art of equal interplay: Kugelmann has Luca Zambito and Sebastian Wolfgruber alongside him, both of whom are quite exceptional young musicians. "Stormy Beauty" is a strong debut, full of power and passion. Here is a young artist who has something new to give to jazz, and also the confidence to follow his own path. Credits: Recorded by Manfred Mildenberger, April 2022 Mixed by Florian Oestreicher at Realistic Sound Studio Mastered by Christoph Stickel