The founder of the LOFT, Hans Martin Müller, was born in 1952 in Geldern in the Lower Rhine region. His musical career began in the recorder circle of the YMCA brass band in Kamp-Lintfort. Flute and saxophone lessons followed, and even at a young age his interest focused on “contemporary” music, which at that time meant jazz, rhythm & blues and soul. So in 1968, in one of his first bands, he played in a wind section together with Burkhard Hennen, the founder of the New Jazz Festival Moers.
Further bands followed, until his band Schacht IV achieved cult status in Moers in the early 1970s (see video). In 1971 he began studying mining after a one-and-a-half-year internship underground in Aachen, but after one semester he heard about the opening of the Jazz Seminar in Cologne (Manfred Schoof and Peter Trunk were in charge) and decided, while waiting to be called up for his alternative civilian service, to devote himself entirely to music for a while.
He then moved to Cologne, where he lived for five years on Friesenwall, above the jazz club Päff. His particular talent, however, lay more in classical music: after barely a year of study he won the Cologne University award for flute in 1973, in early 1974 he became solo flutist of the Rheinische Philharmonie Koblenz, and in November 1974 assistant solo flutist of the Symphony Orchestra of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), where he worked until his retirement at the end of 2014.
In 1977 he began teaching a main-subject flute class at the Cologne Musikhochschule (today: Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln), a position he held until 2002 and which made him one of Germany’s most successful flute teachers of his time. For eight years he was solo flutist of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, played in numerous chamber orchestras as solo flutist or soloist, appeared as a soloist with the Ensemble Modern, and was a member of various chamber music ensembles such as the Consortium Classicum.
As a long-time board member of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, representative of the adjunct lecturers at the Cologne Musikhochschule and member of the staff council of WDR, he was and is interested not only in making music himself but always also in cultural-policy issues. Part-time studies in cultural management and a sabbatical in New York and Paris in 1996/97 followed; the LOFT and its program are the result of this interest. In 2015 he co-founded the Kölner Jazzkonferenz (Cologne Jazz Conference) and served as its spokesperson for one year; at the same time, in 2015 and 2016, he was spokesperson of the Initiativkreis freie Musik (IFM) and during this time substantially advanced and shaped the improvement of political representation of Cologne’s independent music scene.
Above all, his enthusiasm for music in all its forms never left him, and so one of the most active figures of Cologne’s independent music scene was an orchestra musician, and a fully professional one at that. In 1998 he became an honorary member of the Kölner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (KGNM).
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In February 2015, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany awarded him the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his voluntary work. On the occasion of the LOFT’s 30th anniversary in September 2019, he was appointed first honorary member of the Kölner Jazzkonferenz. In May 2026, Hans Martin Müller was awarded the Cologne Cultural Council’s Honorary Prize at the COMEDIA Theater in Cologne.
Memories of a life without the LOFT still exist, but have already faded considerably: since the first hours in November 1987, Urs Benedikt Müller – son of the founder and operator Hans Martin Müller – has accompanied the development of the LOFT. In the early years he was still mainly drawn to the table tennis table on the second floor; as he grew older he became more and more involved in the daily business, e.g. in planning and supervising concerts and in public relations (designing the website, etc.).
After earning his Abitur (the German university entrance qualification) at the long-established Gymnasium Kreuzgasse in Cologne – Alexander von Schlippenbach, too, graduated there in his day – and completing his civilian service, Urs Benedikt began studying biology (with a focus on Genetics) at the University of Cologne in 2003. After a semester abroad in 2007 (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand), he completed his studies in 2009 with a diploma thesis (Genetics / Molecular Evolution) graded “with honors” in the lab of Prof. Jonathan C. Howard. This was followed by doctoral studies with Prof. Howard (Molecular Parasitology / Immunoparasitology), which he completed in 2014 “magna cum laude” after extended research stays in India, Brazil and Portugal.
In spring 2017 he left the university to devote his energy entirely to the LOFT for a while. Since 2017 he has been in charge of the program and since 2019 head of the artistic operations office at the LOFT. He works constantly to improve communication and organization and has become a defining figure both at the LOFT and in Cologne’s jazz scene: from September 2016 to June 2018 he was one of three spokespersons of the Kölner Jazzkonferenz, the cultural-policy lobby for jazz and improvised music in Cologne. From June 2018 to October 2022 he was a member of the board of the association Kölner Jazzkonferenz e.V. In June 2021, his work was honored with the German Jazz Award as Club of the Year (2021), voted by the more than 1,300 members of the German Jazz Union (UDJ). In April 2023, the LOFT with Dr. Müller and his team was again voted Venue of the Year by the UDJ at the German Jazz Award 2023.
Selected publications UB Müller:
Molecular mechanism for the control of virulent Toxoplasma gondii infections in wild-derived mice. Murillo-León M & Müller UB (shared authorship), Zimmermann I, Singh S, Widdershooven P, Campos C, Alvarez C, Könen-Waisman S, Lukes N, Ruzsics Z, Howard JC, Schwemmle M, Steinfeldt T.
Nature Communications 2019 Mar 15;10(1):1233. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09200-2
The impact of Toxoplasma gondii on the mammalian genome. Müller UB, Howard JC.
Current Opinion in Microbiology 2016 Aug;32:19-25. doi.org/10.1016/j.mib.2016.04.009 Epub 2016 Apr 26. Review.
The Toxoplasma gondii rhoptry protein ROP18 is an Irga6-specific kinase and regulated by the dense granule protein GRA7. Hermanns T, Müller UB, Könen-Waisman S, Howard JC, Steinfeldt T.
Cellular Microbiology 2016 Feb;18(2):244-59. doi: 10.1111/cmi.12499. Epub 2015 Oct 30.
Reciprocal virulence and resistance polymorphism in the relationship between Toxoplasma gondii and the house mouse. Lilue J & Müller UB (shared authorship), Steinfeldt T, Howard JC.
Elife. 2013 Oct 29;2:e01298. doi: 10.7554/eLife.01298.
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last updated: 10/2026