A quiet, consistent musician, conceptualist, sound seeker, and organizer

He may still remember his first concert with OKTOPOSSE about 23 years ago at LOFT. I certainly remember it, although at the time I had no idea that Stefan Schultze would one day be one of the musicians who has played more concerts at LOFT than almost anyone else, thereby enriching our concert life time and again. And that since his studies in Cologne and afterwards, even though he moved to Berlin and then Bern a long time ago.

Looking through our archives (well worth a look for everyone!), I was surprised myself at how many different projects he has realized at LOFT over the last 20 years: solo concerts with a prepared grand piano, duets—lately often solo, with the help of a player mechanism—and during the last Cologne Jazz Week, he played an outstanding concert in a trio with Peter Ehwald and Tom Rainey. Numerous concerts ranging from quartets and quintets to large ensembles can also be found in our archive.

Lively – unconventional – catchy: this is how one reviewer described a concert by Stefan’s Large Ensemble, which he has been putting together for many years with top musicians, not only from the Cologne jazz scene. He uses the LOFT as a workshop for this and other research projects, as he will again in November 2025 for his Agents in Space project, which is typical of his love of experimentation and “work in progress.”

Exploring soundscapes together was and is also the concept behind his Sonic Art Lab series, which has already taken place four times at LOFT, where musicians of all stripes meet for two days to work together and then present the results in two concerts. It is truly admirable how consistently he manages to inspire numerous musicians to participate in his projects and bring together such large ensembles.

Last but not least, our sound engineer Christian Heck is a great help and congenial support in everything he plans, works on, and performs at LOFT, which is another reason why Stefan Schultze repeatedly chooses LOFT as the venue for realizing his ideas.

Dear Stefan, 23 years is a long time, and we hope that our collaboration will continue for at least as long again.
Hans Martin & Urs Benedikt, October 2025