Uli Trepte (born 27 September 1941,

Konstanz Konstanz (, , locally: ; also written as Constance in English) is a university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south of Germany. The city houses the University of Konstanz and was t ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

— died 21 May 2009,

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

) was a German musician best known for his collaborations with various influential

Krautrock Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock that developed in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s among artists who blended elements of psychedelic rock, avant-garde composition, and electronic music, ...

bands in the early 1970s.

Early career

Uli Trepte began his musical career in 1966 on

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

as a

free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians duri ...

player/founder member of the Irene Schweizer Trio, a formation that wrote avantgarde history (Frankfurt Jazz Festival 66/1. Montreux Jazz Festival 67/Donaueschinger Tage für Neue Musik 67/Berliner Jazztage 67; 2 LPs). At about that time and later he also appeared with jazz musicians like Yusef Lateef, Gato Barbieri,

Barney Wilen Bernard "Barney" Jean Wilen (4 March 1937 – 25 May 1996) was a French tenor and soprano saxophonist and jazz composer. Life Wilen was born in Nice, France; his father was an American dentist turned inventor, and his mother was French. He bega ...

, John McLaughlin and

Mal Waldron Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron (August 16, 1925 – December 2, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Wa ...

Guru Guru

In 1968 he changed to

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

and with drummer

Mani Neumeier Mani Neumeier (Manfred Neumeier, born 31 December 1940 in Munich) is a German rock musician, free-jazz drummer, artist, and frontman (singer and drummer) of the German Krautrock-band Guru Guru. Probably best known for his work with Guru Guru, Neum ...

formed Guru Guru as part of the newly emerging

psychedelic rock Psychedelic rock is a rock music genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording te ...

music, writing both lyrics and music for that group. It was a band which set a radical new playing standard and belonged to the few genuine pioneers of the so-called Krautrock ( International Essen Song Days/Essener Rock- und Blues Tage 69/many festivals; 3TV appearances; 3 LPs).

Neu!

He left the group in 1972, to play with the Kraut Rock bands

Neu! Neu! (; German for "New!"; styled in block capitals) were a West German krautrock band formed in Düsseldorf in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother following their departure from Kraftwerk. The group's albums were produced by Conny Plan ...

Faust Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroa ...

and Kickbit Information. During 1973 he toured the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

with them.

Spacebox

In 1975 founded his own group, Spacebox, to realize his concept of an authentic European, cyclic structured, minor dominated, modal harmonic, collective improvised, organic-electric live music as a player, composer and songwriter. From 1975 to the early 1980s, his main performance work was through his Spacebox project. With it he performed solo in

und

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

where he stayed for about half a year each (e.g. Performance Weeks ´London Calling`/New London Theater/Avantgarde Center Oval, all in 1976/1977), enlarged it in 1978 to a quartet in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

and gained an international reputation as an extremely un-normed, uncommercial underground figure (Kohfidisch Festival 78/Umsonst&Draußen Festivals 78+79/Münchener Performance Wochen 79 und Münchener Jazzfest 80; 2 LPs). In 1981 he spent six months in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

, one year in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1982, and after disbanding Spacebox, to live from 1985 in Berlin, where he reduced his original music 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 Aja or AJA may refer to: Acronyms *AJ Auxerre, a French football club *Ajaccio Napoleon Bonaparte Airport's IATA airport code *Al Jazeera America, an American news channel *American Jewish Archives *''American Journal of Archaeology'' *, a Germa ...

on the elaborate song project Takes on Words (2 CDs). As the

quintessence Quintessence, or fifth essence, may refer to: Cosmology * Aether (classical element), in medieval cosmology and science, the fifth element that fills the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere * Quintessence (physics), a hypothetical form of da ...

of his musical concept he led 96-01 Move Groove, the Modal Groove Concept, with whom – including the involvement of musicians such as Hans Hartmann (ex Guru Guru) and Edgar Hofmann (ex Embryo) – he also played live again (Herzberg Festival 96/Turkey tour 98; 2 CDs).

Later life

From 2002 he only performed as a solo act called "Bass+Lyrik", but releasing recordings of strictly instrumental music resulting from different sessions with the participation of – besides the above-mentioned –

Chris Karrer Christoph "Chris" Karrer (born 20 January 1947, Kempten, Germany) is a German guitarist and composer. He also plays oud, saxophone and violin. He is known as co-founder of the Amon Düül commune and a member of the related and much more commercia ...

( Amon Düül) and Geoff Leigh (

Henry Cow Henry Cow were an English experimental rock group, founded at the University of Cambridge in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler, b ...

) (2 CDs). Uli Trepte died on 21 May 2009 in Berlin after a "long bout with cancer".

Discography (selected)

with Guru Guru: * ''Ufo'' (1970) * ''Hinten'' (1971) * ''Kan-guru'' (1972) * ''Der Elektrolurch'' (1977) Compilation * ''The Story of Life'' (1979) * ''Rock on Brain'' (1980) Comp. * ''Spaceship'' (1996) * ''30 Jahre Live'' (1998) 3 CD-Box * ''Very Best of Guru Guru'' (1999) * ''Essen 1970 (2003) with Spacebox: * ''Spacebox'' (1981) (vinyl limited to 1000 copies) * ''Kick Up'' (1984)

Solo

* ''Real time music'' (1996) * ''Groove along with dong'' (1998) * ''Yestermorrow Songs'' (2000) with Aja Waalwijk * ''Staticsphere'' (2001) * ''Rollomat'' (2004) * ''Multiphonic music'' (2006) * ''Incredible world'' (2007) with Aja Waalwijk * ''Portrait'' (2009) (Compilation)

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Trepte, Uli 1941 births 2009 deaths People from Konstanz Krautrock German jazz double-bassists Male double-bassists 20th-century German musicians 20th-century double-bassists 20th-century German male musicians German male jazz musicians