Karja Hauptmann Duo
Biography Karja Hauptmann Duo
Kirke Karja
(born 1989) has studied in Estonian Academy of Music classical piano, jazz music and she did her doctoral studies about composition techniques in contemporary jazz music. She is working as a composer, pianist, actor and is the chairman of the board at Estonian Jazz Federation.
Since 2016 Kirke has had around 150 concerts outside of Estonia, in last years also at the cutest European jazz festivals and venues: La Dynamo, Punkt @ Banlieues Bleues, Punkt @ Kristiansand, Nasjonal Jazzscene Victoria, Jazzfest Berlin, Donau115, 12points, Tampere Jazz Happening, Vossa Jazz, Jazzahead!, Jazzkaar, Raahe Jazz Festival, Sile Jazz, Parma Jazz, Jazz Jantar, Katowice JazzArt Festival, Sõru Jazz, Estonian Music Days, Jazz Middelheim, Luxembourg Jazz Rallye, Magnet Festival Wiesbaden, Jazz Forum St Etienne, Sõru Jazz, Jazzweek Cologne, Winterjazz Köln, Unterfahrt Munich, Loft Köln, Darmstadt Jazzforum, Südtirol Jazzfestival etc. Most of them are visited with trio Karja/Renard/Wandinger.
As a composer she has had commissions by European Broadcast Union Jazz Orchestra, Pärnu City Orchestra, Latvian Radio Bigband, Machine á trois (Luxembourg), Ludensemble etc.
Felix Hauptmann
born in 1993, is a jazz musician (piano, synthesizer, composition).
He has been studying at the Cologne University of Music and Dance since 2012. He works both as a soloist and in several ensembles. In 2009, he founded the HNK Trio with Conrad Noll and Fabian Künzer, with whom he won the Deutschlandfunk Studio Prize as part of the 2011 National Youth Jazz Festival and first place at the European Jazz Awards in Kaiserslautern. The trio has recorded two albums. He recorded the albums "Foliag" (2017) and "Yonic" (2019) with Laura Totenhagen's trio and quartet, respectively. He has also been a member of the quartets of Sabeth Pérez and Martin Gasser. He was part of the "Solomons" project with Lennart Allkemper and Konstantin Döben and the sextet of Peter Hedrich. In 2016/2017, he was a member of the German Federal Jazz Orchestra. Outside of ensembles, he has collaborated with a variety of musicians, including Gerd Dudek, Manfred Schoof, Jörg Achim Keller, and Reza Askari. In 2020, he released the album "Talk" with his own quartet, and in 2022 and 2023, he released two albums each with the collaborative jazz piano trio "Percussion."
He also won prizes for best soloist at the 2015 International Jazz Competition and the Horst and Gretl Will Scholarship for Jazz/Improvised Music in 2022.
