Peter Herbolzheimer

Peter Herbolzheimer was born to a Romanian mother and a German father in Bucharest, Romania. His family emigrated in 1951 from Romania to Germany. Peter Herbolzheimer studied the guitar and spent several years in the USA. As an exchange student in the beginning and later on as a design dratfsman for General Motors in Detroit, Michigan. In 1956 Peter finally returned from Motown to good old Germany.

After leaving music-college in Nürnberg, Germany Peter Herbolzheimer played as a trombonist in several Jazz bands. In 1969 he joined legendary German singer Udo Lindenberg and his formation Free Orbit. For several years he was member of Bert Kaempfert´s Orchestra and played along with Jiggs Whigham and Herb Geller. These two guys Herbolzheimer took in his newly founded Rhythm Combination & Brass in late 1969. And as you can guess by it´s name, in this particular band the rhythm secction was equally treated as the rest of the ensemble. These were two keyboards, a guitarre, bass, drums, percussion and the eight man horn section (Allan Botschinsky, Dusko Goykovich, Palle Mikkelborg, Art Farmer, Herbolzheimer, Jiggs Whigham, Rudi Fuesers, Joe Gallardo). While the saxophone part was mostly reduced to one player (Herb Geller oder Heinz von Hermann, later on Ferdinand Povel). The pure concentration on brass without any Saxophone-use enabled vivid and powerful contrasts between strong phrasing and clearance for solo performances. Under the moniker Rhythm Combination & Brass Peter Herbolzheimer performed frequently on German television as well as several radio programs. Rhythm Combination & Brass started out as a Jazz-Rock and Fusion style band and evolved into more Latin elements and later on they focused on Straight-ahead-Jazz and  ending up in classical Big-Band repertoire. Herbolzheimer arranged, in behalf of  Kurt Edelhagen´s Orchestra and together with Dieter Reith and Jerry van Rooyen the music for the Olympic March for the Olympic Games in 1972 in Munich.  From 1972 until 1988 Herbolzheimer was responsible for all Horn secctions for Udo Lindenberg´s Panic Orechstra and played the trombone on many occasions.

Since the foundation of the Bundesjazzorchestra in 1987, Peter Herbolzheimer was their musical conductor until 2006. Furthermore he was chairman of the Union Deutscher Jazzmusiker (UDJ) and later on he became  honory president up to his death. Besides his unresting work as a Big-band leader Peter Herbolzheimer was one of the best German Jazz Arrangers. He wrote several songs for Herbie Hancock and for the austrian legend Konstantin Wecker. In 1994 for the grand opening of the Haus Der Geschichte he re-arranged the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic the "Deutschlandlied" with melting it into the Hymne for Europe. A real nice mash-up that can still be listened to in the museum to this day. Herbolzheimer composed a lot of scores for several movies like Das Traumhaus (1980), Abgehauen (1998) and the television series "So lebten sie alle Tage" (1984).

Herbolzheimer was handling his compositions via his own publishing company together wit his wife Gisela Herbolzheimer.