The duo Eckart Runge & Jacques Ammon
celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, emerged from a shared passion for chamber music exploring the boundaries of jazz, tango, rock, theater, and film music. The two musicians regularly perform in major concert series and festivals, as well as in clubs in Europe, Asia, the USA, and South America.

In 2019, 2021, and 2022, director Tom Tykwer invited the duo to record the soundtrack for the award-winning TV series Babylon Berlin. Starting in 2024, Eckart Runge & Jacques Ammon will present their own concert series as 'Artists in Residence' at the Konzerthaus Berlin.

Since 2021, the duo has worked exclusively with the Berlin Classics/EDEL label. The first album, "Revolutionary Icons," juxtaposes works by Beethoven with revolutionary icons of rock and pop history such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and David Bowie. "Baroque in Blue," an album in which jazz and baroque music enter into dialogue, was released in 2022 and was hailed as a "real coup" (Concerti). The album "Opium," which explores the artistically rich period of the 1920s, is planned for release in 2024.

Eckart Runge
He was the cellist of the Artemis Quartet for thirty years, with whom he performed worldwide and shaped its distinctive profile across all instrumentations. The ensemble's albums, including the Beethoven Complete Recording, have won multiple Diapason d'Or awards, the Gramophone Award, and four ECH0 Klassik awards.

In 2019, Eckart Runge decided to pursue his own artistic path and dedicate himself to his own artistic projects.

His solo debut album, the world premiere recording of Nikolai Kapustin's jazzy Cello Concerto Op. 85 and Alfred Schnittke's Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, was awarded the 2021 German Record Critics' Annual Prize. Eckart Runge will present and curate various programs as an artist in residence at BASF Ludwigshafen and the Bremen Philharmonic Society in the coming seasons.

From 2005 to 2023, he shared his experience as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the Chapelle de la Reine Elisabeth in Brussels. In 2023, he accepted a position as professor of chamber music at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.

Eckart Runge plays a rare cello from Cremona, made in 1595 by the brothers Hieronymus and Antonio Amati, generously loaned to him by Merito String Instrument Trust Vienna.

Jacques Ammon
Born in Santiago de Chile to German-Chilean parents, Jacques Ammon first attracted attention in 1989 as a first-prize winner of the International Claudio Arrau Piano Competition.

In addition to his duo with Eckart Runge, he regularly plays with violinist Daniel Hope. This collaboration has resulted in several albums on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Since 2015, Jacques Ammon has been a professor of piano at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theatre in Leipzig.