Big band plays songbook
HfM Jazz Orchestra featuring saxophonist and conductor Malte Schiller
Save the date: To mark the end of the winter semester, the HfM Jazz Orchestra will once again be performing in public with a renowned guest. At the end of a four-day winter work phase, you are cordially invited to a melodious big band concert on Thursday, February 5, at 7:30 p.m. in the Festsaal Fürstenhaus.
The guest performer is award-winning saxophonist, arranger, composer, and conductor Malte Schiller from Berlin. Tickets are available for €4 at the Weimar Tourist Information Office and at the box office.
In addition to exciting original compositions by the guest conductor, the concert “HfM Jazz Orchestra feat. Malte Schiller” also offers inspiring vocal arrangements with works from the “Great American Songbook.” The arrangements are adaptations of vocal pieces for big band and solo vocals. The soloists are jazz singers from Prof. Jeff Cascaro's class.
“I am delighted that with Malte Schiller we have not only engaged an experienced arranger and big band leader for the spring work phase with the HfM Jazz Orchestra, but also gained a wonderful person and sensitive musician for our students,” says jazz orchestra director Jörn Marcussen-Wulff. “I really appreciate how he thinks about music and how he is able to convey that in his unassuming manner.”
Malte Schiller is considered one of the most sought-after arrangers and conductors for big bands in Germany and has worked with the most important jazz orchestras in Europe during his career. With his 12-piece ensemble “Malte Schiller's Red Balloon,” he won the young talent award at the Burghausen Jazz Festival. As a saxophonist, he plays in his own formations as well as in the “Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra” and the “Orchest-ra-conteur” of Viennese percussionist Reinhold Schmölzer, among others.
As a conductor, arranger, and composer, he has worked with the Metropol Orkest (NL), Vince Mendoza, Jules Buckley, Kurt Elling, Gonzalo Rubalcba, the HR Big Band, the Hamburg big band “Jazzkombinat,” Norma Winston, Kurt Rosenwinkel, the Spielvereinigung Süd, Sebastian Studnitzky, Nils Wogram, and many others. As artistic director and composition teacher, Malte Schiller works with the state youth jazz orchestras of Berlin and Saxony, as well as the BuJazzO, and has been conducting the Nord-West-Bigband Oldenburg since 2014.
[19 December 2025]