Heidi Bayer

After graduating from high school, Heidi Bayer, born in 1987, first completed a bachelor’s degree in cultural management in Marburg before finally enrolling in the study of jazz and popular music in Mainz. During an exchange semester in Miami, she came to understand that the appeal of music for her wasn’t limited to the technical virtuosity of its execution, nor to the ability to perfectly reproduce existing patterns and variations. Instead of incessantly reproducing the licks of the great masters, she began to search for formulations and inflections which would take her to create her very own sound.

Heidi chose Cologne as her new home and became involved in the diverse Cologne scene. She was present at countless sessions and in demand with various large and small bands, who always have a different way of interpreting the tension between freedom and structure. She’s doing her master’s degree in Jazz / Improvising Artist with Ryan Carniaux and Thomas Rückert at the Folkwangschule in Essen and is in demand as a stimulating instrumentalist who explores the sound of her trumpet in all its facets. Apart from her involvement in trumpet sets of big bands such as the »Subway Jazz Orchestra«, the »Hendrika Entzian Bigband« or the »Fuchsthone Orchestra«, she also performs in Janning Trumann’s nonet »Wem Zeit wie Ewigkeit«, Shannon Barnett’s quartet »Wolves and Mirrors«, Stefan Karl Schmid’s octet »Pyjama« or Sven Decker’s quartet »JULI«, to name a few. But she is increasingly focused on her own projects, the duo Bayer/Scobel with pianist Sebastian Scobel or her quartet »Virtual Leak«, whose debut CD was released in spring 2020. Besides Virtuel Leak, KORSH (with double bassist Robert Landfermann and Oli Steidle on drums, among others) is one of her main projects. Heidi not only works as an instrumentalist, but increasingly so as bandleader, arranger, and composer, gaining access to a very wide range of sounds.