photo by Oliver Potratz

Johannes Haage

Born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, Johannes Haage started playing music on violin from age 5, but switched to guitar about eight years later. As a highschool exchange student in Portland, Oregon he started playing jazz regularly and continued to do so back home. He started his college education at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, but soon transfered to Berlin to succesfully finish his studies.
Over the years his travels playing and studying music took him to places like the Center of the Arts in Banff, Canada, and New York City where he had the chance to play and deepen his studies with Bill Frisell, Brad Shepik, Ben Monder, Mark Turner, Dave Douglas, Drew Gress, Ralph Alessi and many others.
In Berlin he has been a very active member of the vital young jazz and improvised music scene since moving there in 2002, playing with many different musicians like Ben Kraef, Tobias Backhaus, Phil Donkin, Heinrich Koebberling, Philipp Gropper, Richard Koch, Oli Steidle, Simon Bauer, Brendan Dougherty, and many more.
Besides the many loose collaborations and gigs as sideman he has been leading his own groups such as Johannes Haage´s P.O.5, the Slowtrio, and the Johannes Haage Trio (with Andreas Lang on bass and Sebastian Merk on drums), which released an Album in 2010 featuring their original cover versions of songs that Marlene Dietrich was known for.
Currently his main band is the Trio DRIFT with Drummer Joe Smith and Matthias Pichler on Bass - to date they have two LP albums out on shoebill music, an independent Vinyl /digital record label directed by Haage.
Their new Album “Wings” will be out Sept.2022

photo by Oliver Potratz

JOHANNES HAAGE | DRIFT

The three musicians of German, Austrian and American origin met in their current home-base Berlin and have been playing extensively as a trio for ten years.
The Trio “DRIFT” mainly works with compositions by guitarist Johannes Haage and drummer Joe Smith which offer a great variety of stylistic starting points from which they embark on new musical journeys together, creating open spaces for spontaneous improvisation and mutual interplay. As in a dreamlike state, their music drifts from sparse to dense, from pop-like structures to free improvisation - but always staying true to the melody of the song and the calling of the moment.

After “Drift” (2015) and ”Darwin's Blues" (2019), their third album “Wings” will be released on shoebill music 09/30/2022