An espresso with...Gabriele Hasler
Gabriele Hasler studied German and music at the university from 1977 to 1983. She is a jazz singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer. The "Jazz Pope" Joachim Ernst Behrendt wrote about her: "one of the most versatile, courageous, creative jazz voices in Europe."
Why did you come to the University of Bremen for your studies?
Because of love. I grew up in Stuttgart, graduated from secondary school and did my Abitur there, and originally wanted to become a journalist because I liked to write a lot and also received prizes for it. There was a school for journalism in Munich, but I couldn't go there. Because my boyfriend, who was very important to me at the time, worked in Bremerhaven. So I came to Bremen and thought I would get a degree in German studies first and then build up my career as a journalist. But in Bremen at that time the only option was German for teacher training. So I did that and also took history as a minor subject.
So no music studies at all...
No, not at first. But music played an important role in my life from a very early age. My first music teacher was my mother, who sang a lot with me. I learned to sing songs, to sing in two voices, to sing canon, to hold notes, to intonate. I also learned classical guitar for six years and started composing for guitar and voice when I was eleven. I was influenced by songwriters like Franz Josef Degenhardt and Konstantin Wecker and themes like loneliness in the cold, capitalist world. But I also set everything to music that I found on my parents' shelf – Brecht, Rilke, Günter Bruno Fuchs. I had real programmes that I performed as a schoolgirl. Everyone thought that was great, but the idea that this could be a profession, that wasn’t really obvious to any of us.
Did that develop during your studies?
I got in touch with folk bands in Bremen. With one band, Tangram, we recorded an LP in 1978-79. That was a kind of turning point for me. So I put an ad in the Bremen Rock Initiative magazine saying that I was looking for a band. Then Jörn Schipper, who studied music and education for the disabled at Uni Bremen, got in touch. At that time he was already playing semi-professionally in various bands – jazz and rock. We later changed the name of our first band to Tequila Sunrise, which played a lot in Bremen and at university festivals, influenced by the German New Wave happening at the time.
And that gave you the impetus to study music?
I changed my study field from history to music and was hooked. I had fantastic piano lessons with Hella Mävers at the university. That’s what I benefited from the most. I was a very practical person. For me, university was often too cerebral, I liked things to be tangible, useable. It was a time when I practised the piano for five or six hours a day and got really good.
What left the biggest mark on you at Uni Bremen?
I came from a very bourgeois-conservative environment as far as school was concerned. I attended a classical girls' school in Stuttgart-Feuerbach, the Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Gymnasium. It was a school that was very clearly oriented towards rote learning. There were no presentations, no group work. So Uni Bremen was unsettling for me at first, but also liberating.
The first semester was part of the introductory phase, the ISES. I had that with Professor Wolfgang Emmerich and my tutor was Waltraud Schoppe, who later became a member of parliament for the Green Party. I was completely dazzled and inspired by her person and her grounded form of freedom, and thought: You can live like that. For me, she was the best thing about Uni Bremen. She had two small children, who – as was usual at the time – were in the course with her, and besides, people were smoking, knitting. My first orientation semester was also a strike semester. I have no idea what it was for or against. I was quite political, I adored Willy Brandt, I was an environmental activist, as you would say today, but all the entanglement with the communist groups was too much for me. I sat there in the cafeteria, listened, knitted, went along to demonstrations, of course, and thought it was all great. It was also about meeting people and celebrating and baking cakes for the strike café. That's how I met Jörn Schipper, who I started my music career with.
So that’s when you decided to become a professional musician?
I was probably the driving force back then, saying this is more than a hobby, we can do something, let's try it. Jörn had already been to the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston. While we were still enrolled at Uni Bremen, we went there together twice, in 1981 and 1983, to study improvised music and jazz. The inspiration for it, we got to some extent from the music course in Bremen, which had already opened up stylistically to jazz and pop with musicians like Sigi Busch, Heinrich Hock, Peter Schleuning and Werner Breckoff. But the skills I needed for my later musical career, I didn’t get those in Bremen. Playing the piano was great for technique and musical training.
How was studying at Berklee College of Music different from studying at Uni Bremen?
I am at my best creatively when I have clear structures to work with. Berklee College has managed to completely break down a music form like jazz, which actually teaches freedom. After an entrance exam, you are individually placed in classes that offered exactly what you needed at that level, in ear training, in arranging, in combo work. You’re also rigorously tested and graded. That worked well for me at the time.
And after that you became a professional musician?
It was a gradual process. There wasn’t this one day, rather it developed little by little. At some point it became clear that if I wanted to do a traineeship, I would have to do the First State Examination beforehand. But then I asked myself what for. Because actually I just wanted to make music. At that time we had success with the rock band and the jazz band, we were earning money, and we made our first record with Friedrich Thein in 1984. It was called "Crazy". In the 1980s, I was the only person in Germany who sang contemporary jazz from my own compositions. There was a big market for me. And so I dropped out of university and became a musician.
What advice would you give students today?
I think that in general there is too much studying and not enough craftsmanship.
More about Gabriele Hasler:
Next concert:
Wednesday 19 October 2022 at 17.00
Bremen, Gerhard Marcks Haus
Gabriele Hasler: vocals, lyrics
Jörn Schipper: vibraphone, percussion