Ulrike Haage

Ulrike Haage
Haage performing in Erlangen in 2016
Background information
Born	1957
Origin	Kassel, Germany
Years active	1980s - present
Associated acts	Vladimir Estragon, Rainbirds, Stein
Website	u-version.com

Ulrike Haage (born in Kassel, lives and works in Berlin) is a German pianist and composer, producer for radio plays and a sound artist.

Ulrike Haage spent her childhood in Ruhr. She grew up listening to the big jazz record collection of her parents and trained to play piano listening to masters as Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk, improvising. As a teenager she started singing and playing guitar in a garage-band.

After studying music and music therapy at Musikhochschule Hamburg, she stayed on an taught improvisation and orchestra direction from 1985 to 1989. During this time she begins to compose and starts playing piano for the first German Female Jazz band: Reichlich Weiblich. While working with Peter Zadek on the theatre play Andi, she meets FM Einheit. With him, Alfred 23 Harth and Phil Minton, the group Vladimir Estragon is founded, where Ulrike begins to introduce electronic music. A year later, because of the departure of Alfred Harth, the quartet becomes the trio GOTO, with the vocal acrobatics of Phil Minton.

In 1990, she joins Katharina Franck in the pop group Rainbirds, which is already facing recognition (their first album Rainbirds attained gold record). They release Two faces and In A Different Light . Between tours and recordings for the Rainbirds and the theatre music group Stein (Katharina Franck, FM Einheit) Ulrike Haage works at theaters in Zurich (Uwe Eric Laufenberg), Düsseldorf (Kazuko Watanabe.) and Berlin (e.g. The Ballade of Narayama with Kazuko Watanabe) In 1999 a close collaboration with the actress Meret Becker begins. In addition she becomes the music director of the concert’s program Nachtmahr and records the CD Fragiles. With the translator and publisher Sylvia de Hollanda (Pociao's Books), she founds Sans Soleil, a publishing house for books and radio plays.