Felix Henkelhausen Quintet - Misanthropic Tendencies (2021)

“Misanthropic Tendencies” is the debut album of the 26 year old double bass player Felix Henkelhausen as band leader and composer. His quintet includes Wanja Slavin (as, cl) Uli Kempendorff (ts, cl), Elias Stemeseder (p, synths) and Leif Berger (dr).

The idea of ​​founding a quintet has been preoccupying Henkelhausen since 2016, when he began to write pieces for a five-person ensemble for a concert. The compositions now contained on the album reflect the musical and compositional development that Henkelhausen has gone through since then, but at the same time allow a glimpse into the future.

Henkelhausen does not put himself in the foreground on this album, he is much more concerned with creating a musical figure, a body of sound that cannot be tied to an individual, but only comes about through the constellation of the five protagonists.

The album title aims at an offended relationship with humanity, at the atrocities that this species is able to commit. At the same time, Henkelhausen is also interested in the love for people and the potential of the creative power of each individual as well as the potential for a better society and non-violent, loving togetherness. He tries to convey this ambivalence in his pieces and to make it clear through the mixture of melody and rhythmic and harmonic rawness. A melancholy undertone runs through his pieces, a kind of veil or shadow that lies on or under the beauty but also the directness and honesty of the recordings.

Felix Henkelhausen, born in Oldenburg in 1995, received classical piano and cello lessons before he became interested in the double bass. At the age of 16 he began his early studies at the HfK Bremen with Prof. Detlev Beier. In 2014 he studied at the Jazz Institute Berlin with Prof. Greg Cohen and Marc Muellbauer, which he successfully completed in 2019. Despite his young age, Henkelhausen already played with nationally and internationally known artists such as Andrea Parkins, Dave Liebmann, Eric McPherson, Gebhard Ullmann, Hubert Nuss, Jim Black, Jochen Rueckert, Kathrin Pechlof, Lotte Anker, Marc Copland, Nate Wooley, Oli Steidle, Pablo Held, Peter Schlamp, Philipp Gropper's Philm, Toby Delius, Wanja Slavin and many others.

Henkelhausen is part of numerous bands such as Jim Black Trio, Liun and the Science Fiction Orchestra, Lorenz Kellhuber Trio, Stefan Schultze Large, Jim and the Shrimps, Bram de Looze Trio feat. Eric McPherson, Nate Wooley’s Knknighgh and Mirna Bogdanovic Group.