Matthias Akeo Nowak

German double bass player, born 1976 in Berlin, living in Cologne. Family bound with traces of Japanese origin, rooted in a vast field of contemporary music between jazz, rock and symphonic music. He has studied orchestral music, jazz and popular music at Musikhochschule Mannheim, Germany and Queens College, New York. He participated in master classes with Charlie Haden, Drew Gress, Eric Harland and has played in classical orchestras, such as Young Austrian Philharmonic Orchestra. After receiving the prestigious DAAD- scholarship in 2008, Nowak moved to New York to study at Aaron Copland School of Music, taking lessons with Antonio Hart, Michael Philip Mossman and David Berkman. Returning to Cologne, Germany, he found himself working in a variety of musical contexts and has played with such musicians as Hendrika Entzian, Bill Elgart, Gary Fuhrmann, Sebastian Gille, Lars Duppler, Achim Kaufmann and Tobias Hoffmann.