Matthias Winckelmann died, record producer and co-founder of the jazz label Enja, whose real job title should be “Enthusiast”. This was not only his prevailing state of mind, but also his method. If someone convinced him of a project, he was quickly so enthusiastic that he often brought the musicians to their best performance with his passion alone. He rarely had to intervene directly in production. He was often deliberately not in the studio. His vision was that he wanted to realize the visions of the musicians.
“His enthusiasm was really exceptional,” says the saxophonist Michael Hornstein. “That enthusiasm infected everyone around him.” Hornstein worked with Winckelmann on an album seven years ago. He recorded it with Bob Dorough, the legendary jazz pianist and singer who worked with Miles Davis and then made a career in television. They had recorded a standards trio disc that featured Dorough’s very own phrasing. Winckelmann was immediately enthusiastic and produced the album on Enja. It was to be Dorough’s last album, and for that reason alone they go down in jazz history. Like so many albums that Winckelmann had produced.
Born in Berlin, Winckelmann grew up in Frankfurt am Main. At the end of the 1960s he came to Munich to study economics. However, he was interested in jazz. Together with the fashion designer Horst Weber he founded the record company Enja (an abbreviation for European New Jazz). The banks didn’t want to give them any money, but it worked out with a personal loan from Winckelmann’s father.
At that time, as a base for the US Army, Munich was one of the European hubs for Afro-American culture. Countless musicians came here on tour, some stayed. The first production of the two was a live recording by pianist Mal Waldron in the legendary Club Domicile in Schwabing. And the story took its course.
Every production started with a dinner at the Winckelmanns in Munich
Enja has released albums by the likes of Charles Mingus, Abbey Lincoln and Archie Shepp. Winckelmann and Weber built up musicians like Attila Zoller, Bennie Wallace and Jane Ira Bloom. Winckelmann produced some of the first albums Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand, recorded outside of South Africa.
When Winckelmann and Weber separated in 1986, they did so in as good a mood as ever. In order to divide up Enja’s catalogue, they gambled for the artists. Both continued the label name. From then on, Winckelmann expanded his horizons in literally all directions. Lebanese oud player Rabi Abou-Khalil joined Enja, Tunisian musician Dhafer Youssef, polyglot salsa band Conexion Latina. There were quite a few milestones. Winckelmann produced the recording of Chet Baker’s last concert and released Eric Dolphy’s late Berlin concerts.
The list of big names is endless. They all felt at home with Matthias and his wife Elisabeth. The Winckelmanns’ recruiting method was also of a friendliness that the Americans in particular were not familiar with. The process of a production usually began with dinner at the Winckelmanns’ home. By the time they were in the studio, most of the musicians were already friends with them.
On Sunday, June 19, Matthias Winckelmann died in a Munich clinic as a result of an operation. He was 81 years old.