Photo by Lukas Diller
The musical paths of bassist and composer Alex Bayer can best be described as unconventional. In his early childhood, he refused to learn the recorder. Later he came across records by John Coltrane, Friedemann Graeff, and Dave Brubeck in his older brother's vinyl collection and discovered the music of the New York downtown scene. Inspired by this, he taught himself how to play the bass and absorbed everything he could find out about music like a sponge. This laid the foundation for a vision of music that carries the urge for freedom, emotional expression, free musical communication, and the desire for essential asymmetries.
To express his own vision of composition and musical interaction, Alex Bayer founded the band "Pentelho" in 2008, combining odd time signatures, free jazz, and lovely melodies. In 2011 the debut album "Pentelho" was released, which led to the Bayrischer Rundfunk calling Alex Bayer the "Bavarian answer to Charles Mingus". In 2019 he released the album ZODIAC with his newly formed quintet. The follow-up Album RADAR was released in May 2022. In addition to his instrumental skills and melodic bass playing, Alex Bayer has established a strong compositional identity in his own music, regardless of genre fluidity.
As a sought-after sideman, Alex Bayer plays in bands such as the Volker Heuken Sextet, the EDM jazz trio „Hotties“, the world music ensembles "Radio Europa" and "Metropolski Circus Orkestar", the Swiss/Austrian/German Large Ensemble "DEr CH-AT Komplex" and the Baroque/Improvisations crossover project "Orpheus has just left the Building“ and he is a founding member of the creative music collective „Metropol Musik“.
Numerous performances, concert tours and TV productions from Maastricht to Salzburg to Skopje and Kharkiv brought him on stages together with Tom Tykwer, Nils Wogram, Gene Pritsker, Antonie Hausmann, Julian Bossert, Rudi Mahall, Oli Steidle, Jim Black, Loren Stillman, Ronny Graupe, John Schröder, Pegelia Gold, Kinderzimmer Productions, Joachim Lenhardt, Johannes Ludwig, Peter van Huffel, Stefan Karl Schmid, Markus Harm, Rebecca Trescher, The Sunday Night Orchestra, Andreas Feith, Peter Fulda, Bill Elgart, Roland Neffe, Joerg Widmoser, Tino Derado, Danny Dziuk, Ofrin, Monika Roscher Big Band, Tobias Hofmann, Christof Tewes, Daniel Prätzlich, Dieter Köhnlein and Mareike Wiening, Tobias Christl among many others.