Bauer & Heupel host tête-à-tête
A jazz concert themed “tête-à-tête” presented by the German musicians Stefan Bauer (vibraphone) and Michael Heupel (flute) takes place later this month.“Tête-à-tête” refers to an informal, light-hearted conversation between two people, especially friends, which Bauer and Heupel will reflect musically in their performance.
Vibraphonist Stefan Bauer is active as both an instrumentalist and a composter in a wide musical field between tradition and avant-garde. His travels all over the world, which has resulted in twelve albums that have so far been released under his name.
Highlights of his travels include concerts with Dou Dou N’Diaye Rose in Dakar (Senegal), Aly Keïta in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Bernard Woma in Accra (Ghana), T.A.S. and Rama Mani in Bangalore (India), Kenny Wheeler in Winnipeg (Canada), concerts in Portugal and Spain with Christoph Haberer and Ramesh Shotham, with Adam Nussbaum, Mick Goodrick in Montreal (Canada) and with Karolina Strassmayer in New York, to name just a few.
For decades, Bauer has been part of Germany’s jazz scene as well as New York’s, his home of 22 years.
His current focus is with multi-flautist Michael Heupel and promoting their outstanding live CD tête-à-tête, the Brooklyn-based Relative Motion Trio and his five-piece ensemble of many years, VOYAGE.
Michael Heupel was born in Bonn and studied the flute at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. His main activity is improvised music and jazz. With his solo programme, Flute News, (consisting of original compositions only), he played at festivals in Montreal and Toronto, as well as in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and some other East Coast cities in the US.
With his own jazz quartet, he played a concert tour in Australia and New Zealand for the Goethe-Institut. He has visited Africa eight times to play with different ensembles, including duo tours with guitar player Uwe Kropinski in East Africa and to West Africa with Stefan Bauer. He has also performed flute solo concerts in Khartoum (Sudan). With the Pata Masters with Norbert Stein, Heupel undertook numerous tours to Brazil, Australia, India, Indonesia and Morocco.
Heupel has been teaching at the musical high schools of Köln and Düsseldorf and has held workshops at several music academies in Europe.
Hosted by the German embassy, the concert takes place at the Deutsche Höhere Privatschule in Windhoek at 19:00. Entrance is free. It is the first time that the two musicians will be performing in Namibia and their only public performance.