ULI TREPTE: MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY

Uli Trepte, born 1941 in Konstanz, Germany, began his musical carreer 1966 on double bass as a free jazz player/founder member in the Irene Schweizer Trio, a formation that wrote avantgarde history (Frankfurt Jazz Festival 66/Donaueschinger Tage für Neue Musik 67/Berliner Jazztage 67; 2 LP´s). In about that time span respectively some time later he also appeared with jazz musicians like Yusef Lateef, Gato Barbierie, Barney Wilen, Mal Waldron and John McLaughlin.

1968 he strictly changed to bass guitar and co-founded the free-rock group Guru Guru for which he also texted and composed, likewise a band of first origin which set a radical new playing standard and belonged to the few genuin pioneers of the so called Krautrock (Essener Song Tage 68/Essener Rock- und Blues Tage 69/many festivals; 3TV appearences; 3 LP´s).

He left the group 72, played a.o. with the Progressive Rock bands Neu!, Faust, Kickbit Information and founded 75 his own group  Spacebox to consequently realize his concept of an authentic, European, cyclic structured, minor dominated, modal harmonic, collective improvized, organic-electric live music as a player, composer and song writer.

With it he performed solo in Berlin und London where he stayed for about half a year each (a.o. Peformance Weeks ´London Calling`/New London Theater/ Avantgarde Center Oval, all 76/77), enlarged it 78 to a quartet in Munich and gained international reputation as an extremely un-normed, uncommercial underground figur (Kohfidisch Festival 78/Umsonst&Draußen Festivals 78+79/Münchener Performance Wochen 79 und Münchener Jazzfest 80; 2 LP´s).

81 he stayed six months in Tokyo, 82 one year in New York, for, after disbanding Spacebox, to live since 85 in Berlin, where he reduced his original musik to a mainly instrumental one, realizing it with selected musicians on sound carriers (1 LP, 1 CD), in the last years giving more priority to the playing of his Modal Minor Constant Structure Blues and working at the same time in cooperation with the Dutch multimedia artist Aja Waalwijk on  the elaborate song project Takes on Words (1 CD).

 As quintessence of his musical concept he leads since 96 Move Groove, the Modal Groove Concept, with whom – including the envolvement of such highly professional musicians like Hans Hartmann (ex Guru Guru)  and Edgar Hofmann (ex Embryo) – he is also performing live again (Herzberg Festival 96/Turkey tour 98; 2 CD´s).