Matthias Petzold is a jazz composer and saxophonist. He was born on 25 April 1964 in Brühl (Rhineland) and first learned the cello, then the clarinet and saxophone. From 1984 to 1992 he studied saxophone with Heiner Wiberny in the jazz department of the Musikhochschule Köln (Cologne University of Music). He completed his studies with the state examination in instrumental teaching and the artistic diploma (künstlerische Reifeprüfung).
Since the late 1980s he has been composing for his own bands and projects, writing pieces for a range of line-ups, from trio and jazz septet to big band and symphony orchestra. Among others, he has composed and arranged for the WDR Big Band and the WDR Rundfunkorchester (WDR Radio Orchestra). On his own label, Indigo Records, he has so far released eleven CDs, featuring some of the finest musicians of the young generation of their day, which have been warmly received by listeners and the specialist press alike.
Stylistically, Petzold’s music starts out from modern mainstream jazz, absorbing influences from groove-based music of many different origins. Just as important is his close engagement with European classical and avant-garde music. Throughout, his music always keeps its lightness and its improvisational joy in playing.
Petzold has also written many compositions for saxophone teaching, published by AMA-Verlag, among them a two-volume saxophone method. For these pieces he was able to draw on his extensive experience of teaching students of all ages and levels. Since 1988 he has taught saxophone at the Kunst- und Musikschule der Stadt Brühl (KuMs, Brühl’s municipal school of art and music), where he also leads two jazz combos. Time and again his artistic and his teaching work come together, as for example in the premieres of his psalm settings and of the big band suite Pangäa.