Wednesday Night Big Band

The "Wednesday Night Big Band plays the music of Markus Geiselhart" on the Lab stage in the east of Stuttgart.

Strongly influenced by Don Ellis, Markus Geiselhart has found his own language in his compositions and arrangements for jazz orchestras.
His compositions are always rich in melody and, sometimes in odd meters, cover an enormous stylistic range from swing to hip hop or, as the Stuttgarter Zeitung wrote a few years ago, are "in tune with the times."
The Stuttgart Wednesday Night Big Band presents a cross-section of the work of the Viennese by choice. The program includes compositions from the album "My Instrument is the Orchestra", released in 2016 with the "Markus Geiselhart Orchestra", as well as from the album "Wiener Neustädter Kanal Suite", released in 2021 together with WDR Big Band trumpeter Andy Haderer. Ludwig van Beethoven can also be found swinging in the program. In 2020, Geisellhart wrote a complete big band program for the Beethoven Year, commissioned by the city of Baden near Vienna, in which he created new big band compositions from motifs from Beethoven's works.
The Wednesday Night Big Band is made up of musicians from the Stuttgart jazz scene from all generations. This ensemble stands for excellent big band jazz in Stuttgart. Concerts with a special program focus take place at the Laboratorium on several Wednesday evenings a year. Time and again, arrangers and composers are given the opportunity to present their own works.

Saxophone: Magnus Mehl, Dan Roncari, Lukas Wögler, Reinhold Uhl, Christoph Beck
Trombone: Eberhard Budziat, Samuel Restle, Uli Röser, Fabian Beck
Trumpet: Dan Roncari, Lukas Wögler, Reinhold Uhl, Christoph Beck
Rhythm section: Christoph Heckeler, Karoline Höfler, Ferenc Mehl

Direction, composition and arrangement: Markus Geiselhart