BIO
Ulrike Schwarz grew up with classical music, played piano and flugelhorn for some time, before beginning flute lessons as a teenager. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach shaped her early on. During a year abroad as a scholarship student in Florida, USA, she encountered jazz for the first time and was immediately enthusiastic. She taught herself saxophone and made it into the school’s jazz band. At the same time, she was a flutist in the Florida All State Concert Band and performed as an actress in the school musical production ‘Into the Woods’. Back in Germany, she played saxophone in the State Youth Jazz Orchestra of Baden-Württemberg. However, the flute remained her primary instrument for some time.
Ulrike Schwarz studied flute (with Dejan Gavric) at the Folkwang University of Music in Essen, and subsequently General Music Education (with Werner Rizzi). During her studies, she worked as a substitute musician in several chamber orchestras, while her enthusiasm for contemporary music grew. She participated in numerous world premieres and developed her own performance formats, through which she could be seen, among other places, at readings in the Grillo Theater. With a one-year continuing education program in circus pedagogy (ZAK Cologne), she underscored her transdisciplinary approach. She taught at music schools in the Ruhr region and at the Leverkusen Music School. After moving to Frankfurt am Main, she became a teacher and worked in this profession for several years. Later, she shifted her teaching activities to the music conservatory (HfMDK Frankfurt am Main, HfM Saar) and increasingly expanded her artistic work—now with saxophone as her main instrument and flute as a secondary one. Significant regular ensembles from this period include the music funds-supported improvisation trio USU Sauer|Schwarz|Schiffelholz and the Ulrike Schwarz Quartet with Uwe Oberg (piano), Carl Ludwig Hübsch (tuba), and Mariá Portugal (drums). With her quartet, she performed her own compositions, as well as with Anke Helfrich (piano) and Dietmar Fuhr (bass) and others. In further projects and ad-hoc formations, Ulrike Schwarz played with, among others, Jeremy Viner (tenor saxophone/clarinet), Devin Gray (drums), Liz Kosack (keyboards), Frank Gratkowski (reeds), Isabel Rößler (bass), Christof Thewes (trombone), Corinna Danzer (saxophone), and Ursel Schlicht (piano).
Beyond her work as a musician, she is active in jazz education and outreach (Berlin Jazz Festival, Stuttgart Theater House Jazz Days). She presented results from her research on aesthetic criteria for improvised music at, among other places, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. At the Jazz Education Network Conference in Atlanta, USA, she presented her Jazzpilot*innen project on promoting democracy.
In various other positions where she was able to develop her focus on improvisation over the years, she taught improvisation ensembles and developed and conducted numerous improvisation projects with students and children. As an expert in jazz with children, she taught jazz education in the Master’s program in Big Band and, together with Corinna Danzer, created the children’s jazz format Jump into Jazz, for which she served as moderator on stage in the hr broadcast hall.
At HfMDK Frankfurt, she teaches in the Master’s program in Big Band and in music education. In the children’s jazz format Jump into Jazz, which she developed together with Corinna Danzer, she served as moderator on stage in the hr broadcast hall.
Ulrike Schwarz conducts research on aesthetic criteria for improvised music with children and has presented her findings at, among other places, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and at the Jazz Education Network Conference in Atlanta, USA.
