Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff established himself as the foremost innovator of multiphonic techniques on the trombone, importing the classical practice of simultaneous tones into avant-garde jazz settings. He entered the world in Frankfurt, Germany, on September 5, 1928, and absorbed jazz early through the extensive record library assembled by his older brother Emil. During adolescence an uncle who performed professionally on violin supplied formal instruction, yet the constraints imposed by the Third Reich compelled the young musician to conceal his growing devotion to jazz. Although he later acquired guitar skills on his own, a postwar transaction involving cigarettes secured a secondhand trombone that redirected his path; performances for stationed American troops soon exposed him to listeners who embraced the idiom he loved. Recognition among peers followed, leading to his first studio appearance in 1952 alongside saxophonist Hans Koller. Throughout the remainder of the decade he contributed to both intimate ensembles and the Dance Hesse Radio Orchestra, and in 1958 he represented Germany in the Newport Jazz Festival International Band, where encounters with Gerry Mulligan and Louis Armstrong ensued.

After the festival Mangelsdorff launched an intense sequence of recordings that featured his brother Emil, pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet on the 1962 Atlantic album Animal Dance, and his own quintet anchored by longtime collaborator saxophonist Heinz Sauer. As the 1960s progressed he gravitated toward free-jazz expression, a trajectory that produced his initial solo recital without accompaniment during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. By deploying multiphonics—simultaneous singing and blowing that generated harmonies and chordal textures—he rendered unaccompanied trombone performance viable within jazz for the first time; subsequent explorations integrated modal improvisation and rock elements. Down Beat magazine designated him the preeminent trombonist worldwide in 1980, after which he appeared with the NDR Big Band, Manfred Schoof’s Old Friends, and the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble. In 2003 an all-star concert at Frankfurt’s Die Alte Oper marked his seventy-fifth birthday. Mangelsdorff passed away on July 25, 2005.