Ed Kröger Quintet

 

The Ed Kröger Quintet is a truly international jazz ensemble, featuring outstanding players hailing from Germany, France and the USA. 

 

Ed Kröger himself began his career as a trombone player and it’s that instrument with which he’s still most closely associated today, although he performed as a pianist for part of his career.  He’s performed with many jazz ensembles and was one of the founders of Big Band Bremen.  Today, he is committed to teaching and playing with younger generations of jazz musicians.

 

Berlin-based Ignaz Dinné plays sax.  As a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, he won the award for outstanding musicianship and went on to play with a host of jazz greats including Tommy Smith, Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock.  He formed his own quartet in 1995 and has also played with the Ed Kröger Quintet since 1990.

 

Vincent Bourgeyx was born in Bordeaux and also studied at Berklee, where he was the first student to win the Billboard Magazine award.  From a New York base, he formed a trio and toured the USA and Japan.  He played in the legendary trombonist Al Grey’s quartet and has worked with many other well known names such as Ravi Coltrane, Chuck Mangione and Jane Ira Bloom.

 

Marcel Krömker developed a love of blues and soul in his early years and, after mastering guitar, he took up Double Bass and played with the German National Youth Orchestra, winning several awards along the way for his playing.  He later joined the German National Youth Jazz Orchestra  and has subsequently studied jazz and classical music in Amsterdam and Berlin.

 

Rick Hollander was born in Detroit and has been playing drums from childhood, subsequently studying with Gene Stewart and Roy Brooks.  After time in New York, he moved to Europe in 1987, forming his own group and working with, among many others, Woody Shaw and Walt Weiskopf.  Madrid’s El Pais called his work ‘a complete short course on jazz for the listener’.

 

The performances by the Ed Kröger Quintet offer an insight into jazz at its most virtuosic and engaging.