Horst Liepolt

Horst Liepolt (born 27 July 1927) is a jazz producer and artist.

In Australia, and later in the United States, he organized numerous successful jazz concerts and festivals and also produced a large number of jazz recordings.

In Australia he originated the long-running Manly Jazz Festival and jazz at the Festival of Sydney, booked bands for The Basement (Sydney's top jazz club of the 1970s) and presented a number of concerts under his banner of Music Is An Open Sky. His "44" recording label featured some of Australia's top jazz musicians and was representative of many of the Australian jazz groups that were active in the 1970s.

His two New York jazz clubs Sweet Basil and Lush Life presented a number of well-established jazz musicians during the 1980s and early 1990s. He produced over 48 jazz recordings by high-profile US musicians including the Grammy Award winning album Bud and Bird by Gil Evans.

Horst Liepolt was born in Berlin, Germany on 27 July 1927.

His father was a writer, a member of the Bauhaus movement, and his mother was a concert pianist, daughter of a Swedish oboe player who migrated to Germany to join the Berlin Philharmonic. Even though the Nazi regime was heavily opposed to jazz, Liepolt was able to hear some of the music during the war years by visiting underground Berlin jazz clubs and listening to jazz records with friends.

In 1951 he migrated to Australia and became very active producing and promoting Australian jazz. He started his career as a jazz producer when he opened up Jazz Centre 44, a renowned and successful jazz venue in Melbourne which ran for over ten years and featured many top Australian jazz musicians of that era such as Stewie Speer, Brian Brown, Alan Lee, and The Melbourne New Orleans Jazz Band. In 1960 Liepolt moved to Sydney where he became involved with record production and management with acts such as Renee Geyer and Sun and Max Merritt & The Meteors. In the early 1970s he formed a working relationship with The Basement nightclub, Sydney's top jazz club of that era, booking many top contemporary jazz bands for the earlier nights of the week.

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