Vincent Crusius Ensemble - Window to My World (2020)

Vincent Marian Crusius, born in Munich in 1994, received his first piano lessons at the age of 6. At the beginning of his high school he began to play the drums, occupied himself more intensively with music and was accepted into the Bavarian Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2011. In 2019 Vincent Crusius completed his studies in music for the high school teaching post at the Musikhochschule in Munich. As part of his music studies he received lessons from Bastian Jütte (jazz drums), Carlos Vera Larrucea (jazz vibraphone), Prof. Tilman Jäger, Maruan Sakas (mainly jazz piano) and Claus Jäkel (trombone).
In addition, since 2015 he has been receiving arrangement and composition lessons from Victor Alcantara, Jörn Marcussen-Wulff, Andreasissenbeck and Matthias Preißinger.
He gained musical experience in numerous ensembles: at the Gärtnerplatztheater Munich, in the big band "Teachers Finest" and the salsa band of the Munich University of Music, as well as in other larger and small ensembles of the university, the "Express Brass Band", the hip-hop bands "Mundhaarmonika" and "FergeXFisherman", the "Original Triad Bigband", the "Moskva Trio" and the improvisation project "Out Of Control".

During workshops he received, among other things Lessons from Hector Martignon, Christian Elsässer, Henning Sieverts, Benny Greb, Harald Rüschenbaum, Roland Duckarm and Philip Frischkorn.
At the end of 2017 he founded the "VincentCrusiusEnsemble" as part of an arrangement examination and was able to present the first compositions for the modern orchestra to the public.

In July 2018, Crusius received a music grant from the City of Munich for the project with his own orchestra.
For several years he has been working regularly with school big bands in the Munich area in workshops lasting several days, thus gaining a wealth of experience in the pedagogical use of jazz in individual and group situations. In the past, this expertise brought him to Eastern Europe and Africa with musical development aid.