Torsten de Winkel

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Torsten de Winkel (born in Frankfurt am Main) is a German musician, composer and philosopher primarily active in the jazz and world music genres. He is widely known as an electric and acoustic guitarist, but also records and performs on electric sitar, keyboards and various percussion instruments.

Biography

At the age of 10, de Winkel picked up the Charango in La Paz, Bolivia where his father worked for the UN. He proceeded to teach himself guitar and jazz improvisation and attended the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany for a brief period.

At the age of 19, he became the youngest artist ever to be given complete creative control by a German major label[citation needed] with the release of "Mastertouch", his debut recording, on which he collaborated with Michael Brecker, Billy Cobham, Kai Eckhardt, Ernie Watts, Alphonse Mouzon, Hellmut Hattler, Joachim Kühn and various other internationally renowned instrumentalists, setting a new standard for young musicians in his home country later to be followed by artists such as the successful trumpeter Till Brönner.

Upon an invitation by Steve Smith and Tom Coster, de Winkel become successor to Mike Stern and Frank Gambale in their co-led jazz-fusion group Vital Information and proceeded to tour in Europe. He accepted a full scholarship from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and graduated summa cum laude. In the 1990s, he collaborated with an unusually broad spectrum of artists including Pat Metheny, Al Foster, Larry Grenadier, Ravi Coltrane, Joe Zawinul, Grandmaster Flash, and more recently Gwilym Simcock. He can also be heard on all ten CDs of the German vanguard electronic jazz duo Tab Two and continues to tour and record with Hattler, the group of former Kraan head Hellmut Hattler. This group won the Echo Award, the German equivalent of the Grammy Award, for best jazz album in 2001. Since, he has been active in various German and Spanish projects as well as in non-profit organizations exploring sustainability and globalization issues in the context of the arts.

Disenchanted with the common chord scale theory didactics, de Winkel has developed an alternative approach to teaching improvisation. Under the title Training Intuition this approach considers recent developments in learning psychology and in the neurosciences. De Winkel has conducted courses, master classes and clinics at various institutions, among them the Musikhochschule Hamburg and the Berufsfachschule für Musik in Krumbach/Schwaben. De Winkel is also active in the field of neurophilosophy.

Since 2005, Torsten de Winkel is one of the volunteer organizers of the Bimbache openART Festival and Initiative in El Hierro (Spain), an ambitious and non-profit effort at creating a platform which seeks to bridge traditional divides, both on a musical and human level, in a globalizing world.

Literature

  • M. Kunzler: Jazz Lexikon. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2002

Discography (selection)

As Leader

With other artists

  • Pat Metheny: Secret Story Live (DVD / LD) / Tonight Show with Jay Leno
  • Steve Smith’s Vital Information: Fia Fiaga (Sony Columbia) / VitaLive (as composer)
  • Aziza Mustafa Zadeh with Bill Evans, Omar Hakim and others: Inspiration (Sony)
  • Alphonse Mouzon: The Sky Is The Limit / Love Songs And Ballads
  • Tab Two: Flagman Ahead / Belle Affaire / Sonic Tools / Tab Two (all Virgin) / Mind Movie / Space Case / Hip Jazz / Between Us (all Polydor) / Live at the Roxy / Two Thumbs Up (all 36music)
  • Hellmut Hattler: Heartware (Vielklang) / No Eats Yes (Polydor) / Bass Cuts / The Big Flow / Live Cuts / Gotham City Beach Club Suite / The Kite / Live Cuts II (all Bassball)
  • XXL: El Jazz Latino / The Funky Stuff (all Sony)
  • Core 22: Nuance (BMG)
  • Deep Dive Corp.: Beware Of Fake Gurus
  • Kike Perdomo: AC&Funk
  • Carola Grey: Drum Attack!
  • Various Artists: Basstorius (with Matt Garrison) / Mysterious Voyages - A Tribute To Weather Report (with Scott Kinsey)

External links