Volker Kriegel

Volker Kriegel (24 December 1943 – 15 June 2003) was a German jazz guitarist and composer who was a founding member of the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble. He was also an author and a cartoonist. Kriegel was born in Darmstadt on 24 December 1943. He began to play the guitar at the age of 15.Kriegel studied sociology with Theodor Adorno, but in 1962 was already playing in a band with Albert and Emil Mangelsdorff in Frankfurt, and abandoned his studies. He was then in a fusion band led by an American expatriate, vibraphonist Dave Pike, and recorded the album Noisy Silence – Gentle Noise (1969). Simultaneously, Kriegel started Spectrum and 1975 the Mild Maniac Orchestra. He recorded the album Keep on Driving (MPS, 1970) with Don "Sugarcane" Harris, then signed with MPS and released the jazz-rock album Spectrum (1971). Five years later he started the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble, a shifting collective which at various times included Charlie Mariano, Albert Mangelsdorff, Ack van Rooyen, and Barbara Thompson. In 1977 Kriegel co-founded the label Mood Records, which released his own music and that of the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble.Kriegel drifted from music and started writing children's books. "During the 1990s, he ceased his activities as a leader and concentrated instead on working as a composer and on his longstanding second career as a cartoonist; his illustrations appeared in newspapers, magazines, books, and animated films." Manchmal ist es besser, man sagt gar nix, a book containing some of his cartoons and writings on jazz and other topics, was published in 1998. He reunited the Ensemble for a tour in 2002. He died of cancer in Spain on 15 June 2003.