Lorenz Kellhuber

Classical music is firmly anchored in his DNA, jazz taught him to stand on his own two feet, and in free improvisation Lorenz Kellhuber repeatedly finds the boundless fulfillment of his musical vision, a Contemporary Chamber Music. He plays with his own musical history, intuitively seeking out various stations of his musical imprint, ranging from the Baroque to the Modern. There are no limits, except for his own artistic demands.

“Hardly anyone is likely to walk between jazz and ‘classical piano music’ in such a spectacularly oscillating way as the pianist Lorenz Kellhuber. Whether improvising over ostinati in changing positions or between free tonality and bound harmonic sound anchors, Lorenz Kellhuber creates an intimate, concentrated situation between himself, the piano, the room and his audience,” writes the Neue Musikzeitung about his current solo album “Live at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg”.

Born in Munich in 1990 as the son of two church musicians, Lorenz Kellhuber began classical piano training at the age of five. At the age of eight he played his first concert and began to compose his own music. At the age of eleven he became a junior student at the HfKM Regensburg and later received lessons from Prof. Franz Massinger, a student of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Shortly thereafter, he was discovered by Rob Bargad (Nat Adderley Quintet) who introduced him extensively to Jazz. At the age of only 16, Kellhuber passed the highly gifted exam and became a student at the Jazz Institute in Berlin. During his frequent stays in New York, he also received lessons from Fred Hersch and Sophia Rosoff, and graduated in 2010 as one of the world’s youngest Bachelor graduates. Since then, his concerts have taken him throughout Europe, to the USA and to South America. He has played on international stages such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Isarphilharmonie Munich, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Montreux Jazz Festival, Basel Jazz Festival, Getxo Jazz Festival, Bohemia Jazz Festival, Mar del Plata Jazz Festival, Jazzwoche Burghausen. Concerts as sideman and co-leader he played alongside Ed Partyka, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Charles Lloyd, Ack van Rooyen, Johannes Enders, Adele Neuhauser & Edi Nulz, Jesse Simpson, Orlando Le Fleming, Steven Heelein, Obed Calvaire, Bob Mintzer and many more.

In the summer of 2014, he became the first German musician to receive the first place in the renowned Montreux Jazz Piano Solo Competition. In 2016 he was nominated for the ECHO Jazz as “Newcomer of the Year”, in 2018 he was one of the ten “new key players” in the music magazine “Jazz thing”. He has released a total of eight albums and one EP since 2012, including “The Brooklyn Session” (2015), with Orlando Le Fleming on bass and Obed Calvaire on drums, the solo albums “Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival” (2017), “Contemporary Chamber Music” (2021) and “Live at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg” (2022), and the two trio releases “Samadhi” (2019) and “About:Blank” (2020) with Felix Henkelhausen on bass and Moritz Baumgärtner on drums.

Since completing his studies, Lorenz Kellhuber has been a sought-after lecturer. He regularly gives workshops and master classes at home and abroad. He already practiced his teaching activities at the HfKM and the University of Regensburg as well as at the University of Music in Nuremberg and Mannheim. Since 2020, he has been a lecturer at the University of Music in Lubeck. For the winter semester of 2021, Kellhuber received an appointment as professor at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden. Together with friends from his youth, Lorenz Kellhuber founded the Regensburg Chamber Music Festival in 2020, which he continues to direct and curate.