Ulrich Phillipp

started playing electric bass at the age of 15 in several rock and blues bands. After moving to Wiesbaden he changed over to the double bass and played in jazz rock and free jazz bands. Ulrich’s activities since the late seventies have been focussed on improvised and experimental music, as well as on sound installations and audio art (even though he still occasionally plays dance music). Ulrich Phillipp collaborates with numerous visual artists, dancers, actors, and values both being a member of long-standing groups and playing in ad hoc situations. Ulrich has developed numerous techniques to get new, astonishing and compelling sounds and noises out of a double bass.

Ulrich is a founding member of one of the earliest and most prolific musicians’s collective, the ARTist in Wiesbaden (Germany), and co-curator of their HumaNoise congress of contemporary improvised music. He is one of the most adept performers of European improvised music and has played in innumerable venues all over Europe and released more than fifty CDs and vinyl records. Beside composing for film and dance, Ulrich also does educational social work with children.

Ulrich plays a 5-string double bass with a high C string, using orchestral tuning (C G D A E) with a 3/4 measure (Mensur). The provenance and age of the instrument are undetermined, but it might have been made by Wilfer around 1970. Ulrich currently plays synthetic fiber strings, braided with chrome steel and gutstrings. He is always open to new experiments…