Projects
Crossover music connects music genres, transcends boundaries, and creates new connections.
Crossover Beethoven & Play Bach Reloaded - Marcus Schinkel Trio
Marcus Schinkel – Piano, Synth
Wim de Vries – Drums
Fritz Roppel – Bass
Beethoven is the starting point for the trio’s soaring musical journeys between jazz, classical, and rock, featuring an innovative sound blending grand piano and synthesizer, as if Keith Jarrett and Keith Emerson had met for a pianistic rendezvous. “The great classical master’s ideas are interwoven with original concepts to create a sensory listening pleasure.“ STERNIn the new program Play Bach Reloaded, Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions serve as a template for original, contemporary jazz interpretations: Schinkel breaks down the monumental melodies of the preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, as well as the Toccata, expands the individual parts with his own elements, and reassembles them. In this way, Bach’s flow and the meandering harmonies are organically poured into a still-open form.
The Marcus Schinkel Trio tours with the current program “Crossover Beethoven,“ a “...balancing act across eras, between classical and modern, between inspiring original and innovative contemporary realization (...) subtly operating with the charm of a rock band“ (JAZZPODIUM 2/16), where “the great classical master's ideas are interwoven with original concepts to create a sensory listening pleasure.“
Concerts for this program – including performances with saxophone legend and two-time Grammy winner Ernie Watts at Jazzfest Bonn and JazzRally Düsseldorf – resulted in sold-out venues.
Beethoven is the starting point for the trio’s musical flights of fancy. Motifs such as the famous theme of the 5th Symphony are creatively reinterpreted in compositions like Going On The 5th or Der Wuth Über Den Verlorenen Euro and combined with modern harmonies and rhythms. Marcus Schinkel masterfully moves between jazz, classical, and rock, blending lyrical piano playing with distinctive synthesizer sounds.
As a musical boundary-crosser, Schinkel has collaborated with artists such as Charlie Mariano, Eric Vloeimans, and the Munich Symphony Orchestra. Concert tours have taken him to Europe, Russia, Vietnam, Honduras, China, and the Caribbean. He is accompanied by his long-standing fellow musicians Wim de Vries on drums and Fritz Roppel on electric and double bass, who significantly shape the trio’s stylistic diversity.
The CD concludes with Ode To New Joy – a musical declaration not to preserve tradition, but to develop it vibrantly.
Duo Passacaglia - Bridge Builders Between Jazz and Classical
Marcus Schinkel – Piano, Synth
Reiner Witzel – Saxophone
Founded in 2023, Duo Passacaglia is dedicated to reinterpreting works by great composers such as J.S. Bach, Robert and Clara Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Fanny Hensel, presenting them in a contemporary and new light. The sensitive balance between familiar melodies of classical originals and the impulsive creativity of jazz offers the audience an extraordinary listening experience. Currently, in line with the cultural and foreign policy goals of the Federal Republic, the focus is consciously directed towards the works of female composers.
The themes of the classical originals appear as recognizable motifs like mosaic pieces, forming the starting point for lyrical and dynamic dialogues between piano and saxophone. A project that preserves tradition while simultaneously exploring new artistic horizons.
Thus, the duo represents German music culture and simultaneously invites an exchange that can build bridges and open doors. Previous tours have taken Duo Passacaglia, in addition to numerous performances in Germany, through Central America and Nepal, including collaborations with the German Embassy, the Goethe-Institut, and the Humboldt-Institut. During these tours, encounters with regional musicians took place, as well as workshops and masterclasses. Furthermore, there were music projects in children’s villages and social institutions, particularly in the area of inclusion.
German Music Culture and Intercultural Exchange.
Both musicians have been very active nationally and internationally for many years and look back on a multitude of concerts and productions in various music styles, from classical to jazz to pop and world music, as well as collaborations with musicians and cultural institutions worldwide, as soloists, composers, and arrangers.
Since 2024, the Duo Passacaglia has been on international concert and educational tours. As part of a Nepal tour, the duo gave concerts, led workshops for children and young people, and performed with regional guest musicians – including at the Ganesh Children’s Home in Kathmandu, the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory, the Gypsy Jazz Club Patan, and the Himali Bidhalaya Children’s Village in Pokhara.
In Germany, the duo also performed at renowned events, including the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf and the Jazznacht Bonn. This was followed by a Central America tour in collaboration with the German Embassy Tegucigalpa, the Goethe-Institut, and the Humboldt-Institut. Concerts and workshops took the duo to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras – including the Humboldt Forum San José, the MARTE Museum in San Salvador, and Tegucigalpa, Gracias, Tela, and San Pedro Sula. Collaborations were established with, among others, the ApoAutis Center for Autistic Children and the Orquesta Sinfónica del Valle de Sula.
Credo In Unum Mundum - Jazz Mass with orchestra
An interreligious and cross-genre mass based on Beethoven’s Credo, Agnus Dei, and Benedictus from the Missa Solemnis for jazz trio, choir, orchestra, 4 classical singers, and 4 singers from Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, with arranged and newly composed parts by Marcus Schinkel.
Schinkel took the monumental Credo from the mass composition, broke it down, and reassembled the individual parts with his own additions (...) Bringing together and coordinating the so differently functioning jazz and classical elements, notated and free elements, requires a great deal of sensitivity, which both Karin Freist-Wissing and Marcus Schinkel brought to the musical interfaces. In the middle section, after the classical soloist quartet of the intimate “Et incarnatus,” the expressive worlds of five world religions meet motifs from Beethoven's Credo as a response in Schinkel's arrangement.
Classic meets Gypsy - Joscho Stephan & Marcus Schinkel Trio
Joscho Stephan – guitar
Marcus Schinkel – piano, melodica, theremin
Wim de Vries – drums
Fritz Roppel – bass
Joscho Stephan is “the future of Gypsy jazz guitar“ (Acoustic Guitar Magazine) and thus one of the most renowned young European representatives of this style. On the occasion of the Dresden Jazz Days and after a nocturnal session, the idea for a combination of Gypsy jazz and classical templates for “Classic Meets Gypsy“ was born.
Gypsy jazz is the first jazz style invented in Europe around 1930, and 140 years earlier, young Ludwig van Beethoven attracted attention at the Viennese court with unheard-of and novel fantasies on the piano, which, however, arose in the moment – thus also a precursor to jazz.
What could be more natural than bringing together two great virtuosos of their instruments – Gypsy guitarist Joscho Stephan and classical jazz pianist Marcus Schinkel.
They draw from various melodic templates, from Mozart’s Figaro, Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Debussy’s Reverie, Franz Liszt’s famous Liebestraum, or Beethoven’s “Rage Over the Lost Penny,“ to a brilliant rumba version of Nino Rota’s signature theme.
Joscho Stephan is “the future of Gypsy jazz guitar“ (Acoustic Guitar Magazine) and thus one of the most renowned young European representatives of this style. Concert tours with his trio have taken him to Australia, Europe, and the USA, including performances at the legendary New York jazz club Birdland and the Lincoln Center. He has also played with Paquito D’Rivera, James Carter, Charlie Mariano, and Helmut Eisel.
Marcus Schinkel “effortlessly weaves his piano playing with the genres of jazz, rock, and classical“ (WeGoToMusic-Magazin) Performances with the trio in the Caribbean and Russia and for the German Embassy in Vietnam, current tours through Honduras in 2017 and China in 2018. He has also played for Maestro Kurt Masur and with two-time Grammy winner Ernie Watts, Markus Stockhausen, Paul Kuhn, PeeWee Ellis, Jazz Prize winner Frederik Köster, and the Munich Philharmonic.
Wim de Vries is one of Europe’s most renowned drummers (the Dutch newspaper Slagwerk awarded him the prize for “best Jazz Drummer of the Benelux 2016 and 2018), co-founded the “Drumbassadors“ with Rene Creemers, with whom they are guests at drum festivals worldwide.
Fritz Roppel is a well-known bassist in the formation Tango Fuego and masters both the classical bowed and jazz-plucked double bass.
As the humanist Thomas More once wrote:
“Tradition is not the preservation of ashes, but the passing on of the fire!“
Crossover Music - Ernie Watts & Marcus Schinkel Trio
Ernie Watts – sax
Marcus Schinkel – piano, synth
Wim de Vries – drums
Fritz Roppel – bass
Crossover music connects music genres and transcends boundaries. Who would know this better than one of the greatest jazz saxophonists, Ernie Watts, who played with legends like Miles Davis and Frank Zappa, who never bothered with adhering to musical boundaries. Watts, a two-time Grammy winner, features his unmistakable singing tone and great virtuosity with apparent opposites like Thelonious Monk, Aretha Franklin, and the Rolling Stones in his resume.
“Tradition is not the preservation of ashes, but the passing on of the fire!“
What could be more natural than to team up with another boundary-crosser, crossover pianist Marcus Schinkel and his trio.
This happened in May 2016 at the Bonn Jazz Festival and was immediately hailed by the press and public as one of the highlights (“Grand cinema with pure sound magic!“ GA Bonn, May 7, 2016)
The Schinkel Trio takes its own path with its latest CD “Crossover Beethoven,“ beyond the mainstream repertoire of many piano jazz trios: Not only does Schinkel masterfully move between the genres of jazz, classical, and rock, he also weaves his lyrical piano playing with distorted synthesizer sounds, as if Keith Jarrett and Keith Emerson had met for a pianistic rendezvous. Since Joe Zawinul and Jan Hammer, few keyboard artists have explored an innovative sound between grand piano and synthesizer.
Schinkel has collaborated with a wide variety of artists such as Peter Herbolzheimer, Charlie Mariano, PeeWee Ellis, and the Munich Symphony Orchestra. Engagements with his Classical Meets Jazz program have taken Schinkel to Europe, Russia, the Caribbean, and for the German Embassy to Vietnam.
In June 2015, the trio gave a concert in front of over 3500 spectators at the Protestant Church Congress in the Porsche-Arena Stuttgart.
His long-standing fellow musicians are Wim de Vries on drums, known throughout Europe through the drum duo Drumbassadors, and the extremely versatile electric and double bassist Fritz Roppel, former lecturer at the renowned Cologne University of Music, who has made a name for himself in various formations from classical, tango, jazz, or pop.
Both support the wide range from melodic-romantic lines to expressive outbursts of wild synthesizer solos.
Collaborations Around the World
In addition to his regular projects, Marcus Schinkel is involved in collaborations in Germany and around the world.
Concert and collaboration projects have taken him to German Embassies in Italy, China, Nepal, Vietnam, Honduras, Panama, Jamaica, and Bolivia, as well as to Goethe-Instituts and the Humboldt-Institut. Furthermore, he has been a guest at renowned festivals and cultural events such as the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival, the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Dresden Jazz Days, the Flaneries Festival in Reims, and the Lovebird Festival Düsseldorf. These long-standing international collaborations reflect the cultural diversity and cross-border orientation of his musical work.
