Biography
He attended the Berklee School of Music for two and a half years before leaving in his junior year to tour with Gary Burton, the dean of the school at the time. Subsequently, Rosenwinkel moved to Brooklyn, where he continued to develop his jazz guitar skills by performing with Human Feel, Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band, Joe Henderson Group, and the Brian Blade Fellowship. During that time he began using a Lavalier lapel microphone fed into his guitar amplifier that blends his vocalizing with his guitar and has become a trademark of his sound, both live and in the studio.
In 1995 he won the Composer's Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and was eventually signed by Verve Records. Since then, he has played and recorded as both a leader and sideman with fellow-alumni such as Mark Turner and Brad Mehldau as well as many others. During Rosenwinkel's tenure with Verve he collaborated with Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, who co-produced his studio album Heartcore (2003) that featured bassist Ben Street, drummer Jeff Ballard and saxophonist Mark Turner and was a departure from the usual compositional process for Rosenwinkel, blending elements of jazz, rock, hip hop and electronica. He would further collaborate with Q-Tip, performing guitar on the latter's albums The Renaissance (2008) and Kamaal/The Abstract (2009).
Rosenwinkel has since released a double live album as band leader. The album is entitled The Remedy - Live at the Village Vanguard (2008) and features Mark Turner, Aaron Goldberg, Joe Martin and Eric Harland. On November 10, 2009, Rosenwinkel released a trio recording, Standards Trio: Reflections (2009), which features Eric Revis on bass and Eric Harland on drums. On September 7, 2010, Rosenwinkel released his ninth album as a leader, entitled Kurt Rosenwinkel & OJM: Our Secret World (2010) and featuring OJM an 18-piece big band from Porto, Portugal.
Originally from Philadelphia, Kurt Rosenwinkel currently resides in Berlin, Germany, raising his two sons Silas and Ezra and serving as professor of jazz guitar at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler.
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