Deciding to become a bass trombonist in current times requires talent, courage and passion. Maxine Troglauer, who was born in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1995 and now lives in Berlin, has all this and much more – and at just 30 years old, she is probably the leading bass trombonist in our country.

After completing a two-year master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music in New York with bass trombone legend David Taylor in 2021, she found a diverse variety of engagements such as with the Munich Symphony Orchestra, ECM pianist Florian Weber and the HR Big Band.

After all, she is an artist so that she can bridge cultural gaps, and not to engage in superfluous, cultural trench warfare between any genres or micro-genres; between E and U, jazz and classical music or even between new music and improv: all a tie! A tie is good.

In other words: Troglauer does not think in clichés but recognizes opportunities. Her voluminous sound, solemn and humble, light-footed and deeply sad, unmistakable and overwhelming at the same time, seems to be above all our earthly questions anyway!

Maxine Troglauer’s debut album “Hymn” will be released on 06.06.2025 on Berlin label Fun In The Church. An album that not only moves effortlessly between past decades and genres, but also freely between entire centuries. The compositions and playing instructions range from baroque to classical to modern jazz, to the avant-garde of our time and back again.

As the author Marcel Proust once said so beautifully about his profession: “The writer always stands on the threshold between memory and oblivion, a realm in which past and present collide and ultimately form a timeless harmony”. We must imagine Maxine Troglauer in such a realm. Only instead of a typewriter, she has chosen the bass trombone as her instrument.

As a special guest: the legendary jazz trumpeter Peter Evans. Together with double bassist Robert Lucaciu and drummer Wouter Kühne, they create moments of great density and intensity. Julius Windisch expands the sound spectrum with his expressive piano playing, which often turns into dynamic sound experiments.

Maxine Troglauer has created the album in a pyramidal form: she begins with a solo prologue in which she stands alone in the room with her trombone, expands this space into a duo for bass trombone and double bass (particularly impressive in the piece “Cantus Firmus”), finds her way to a full, hymn-like quintet line-up in the title track “Hymn”, before finally returning to a solo epilogue: An album like a journey, on which Troglauer’s bass trombone sound clearly forms the dramaturgical compass.

“Hymn” was recorded in June 2024 for Deutschlandfunk at the Kammermusiksaal in Cologne. If you listen carefully, you will recognize in every passage a subtle offer for a dialogue in which all instruments, from the prepared piano to the piccolo trumpet, are allowed to unfold in the spirit of chamber music. Classical, jazz, contemporary music – for Maxine Troglauer, these are not areas that can be separated from one another. They are organically interconnected, timeless spaces of resonance and discourse.