[photo by Kostyantyn Smolyaninov]
"Drummer Klaus Kugel is one of Central Europe's busiest and most articulate modern jazz drummers ... he treads the boundary between inside and outside playing in a particularly incisive way; always listening and never getting caught up in his own considerable chops." - Dave Wayne, AllAboutJazz, USA
„Percussionist Klaus Kugel is a commanding force behind the drum set. He creates layers of tension drawn out from intuitive listening. There is a constant emotional swelling underlying every fill and cymbal crash." - John Barron, Jazzreview.com, USA
„Kugel’s desire to build tension is innate, springing out of a lifetime of learning and practicing more than just method and tone. Like all the quality drummers, Kugel does more than provide a beat. He feels it, knowingly inserting himself in moments and emotions.“ - blogcritics.org, Jordan Richardson, Seattle, USA
"These three discs ... show Kugel as a drummer whose nearly boundless energy and imagination cannot be confined by neat categories." - Ed Hazel, Signal To Noise, USA
„Kugel is one of the great contemporary European drummers, and plays all over the kit with a sharp hard pulse.“ - Carl Pearson, Jazz Director, WFHB Bloomington, IN, USA
„Most ensembles can only wish for a percussionist with such high skill and perceptive musicianship as Klaus Kugel“ - Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany
Klaus Kugel studied at the School of Jazz in Munich. Since 1989 he attracted attention worldwide through projects with Petras Vysniauskas, Karl Berger, Tomasz Stanko, Charlie Mariano, Kent Carter, Michel Pilz, Theo Jorgensmann, Kenny Wheeler, Vyacheslav Ganelin, Bobo Stenson, Glen Moore, Steve Swell, Sabir Mateen, Robert Dick, Peter Evans, Connie Crothers, Perry Robinson, Hilliard Greene, John Lindberg, Gerd Dudek, William Parker, Bobby Few, Roy Campbell, Jemeel Moondoc, Waclaw Zimpel, Marco Eneidi, Mars Williams, Charles Gayle, Conny Bauer, Ken Vandermark, Joe McPhee, John Edwards, Jaimie Branch, Knox Chandler a.m.o..
Over the past 30 years, he gave numerous concerts and appeared at festivals throughout Europe, the Baltic States, Canada, USA, Syria, Japan, Mexico, Russia, China, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Israel.