Embryo
Biographie Embryo
Embryo
is a musical collective from Munich which has been active since 1969, although its story started in the mid-1950s in Hof where Christian Burchard and Dieter Serfas met for the first time at the age of 10. It was one of the most important German jazz-rock bands during the 1970s and has also been described as "the most eclectic of the Krautrock bands."
In 1969 the band was founded by multi instrumentalist Christian Burchard (drums, vibraphone, santur, keyboard) and Edgar Hoffmann (saxophone, flutes). To date more than 400 musicians have played with the collective, some, such as Charlie Mariano, Trilok Gurtu, Ramesh Shotham, Marty Cook, Yuri Parfenov, Allan Praskin, X.Nie, Nick McCarthy, Monty Waters and Mal Waldron, have played on multiple occasions. Longtime members are Edgar Hoffmann (sax,violin), Dieter Serfas (drums), Roman Bunka (guitar, oud), Uve Müllrich (bass), Michael Wehmeyer (keyboard), Chris Karrer (guitar, oud, violin, sax), Lothar Stahl (marimba, drums), and Jens Polheide (bass, flute).
With Ton Steine Scherben a. o. they were founders of the first German independent label Schneeball in 1976.
In 1979 the band started a nine-month tour to India by bus which is documented in the movie "Vagabunden Karawane". Embryo developed from jazzy Krautrock to a world music band which is able to merge different styles and trends. Many of their albums originated during collective journeys on 4 continents. The band played many festivals around the globe: in India (Mumbai Jazz 1979), England (Reading 1973), Nigeria (Port Harcourt Jazz 1987), Japan (Wakayama 1991) to name a few. In July 2008, Embryo was awarded the German World Music Award RUTH 2008 at the TFF Rudolstadt Festival.
In 1981, Müllrich and Wehmeyer left Embryo to form "Embryo's Dissidenten" who soon became Dissidenten.
On the road to Marokko in March 2016 Christian Burchard had a stroke. Since then Marja Burchard (drums, vibraphone, vocals, trombone, keyboard), daughter of Christian Burchard, who grew up with the band, is leading Embryo.
