Lennart Smidt
 // pianist, improviser, composer based in Berlin.

Current projects are SOLO, TRIO and GROUP concerts.

As a place where creativity meets groove and spirit, where improv meets composition, I see jazz as an acoustic playground.
Any moment is different and improvisation is our tool to tell true and honest musical stories of these moments.
This work manifests both in unique live shows and recordings.

First piano solo album Boomerang in 2025.
First jazz ensemble EP Take.Off in 2016.

SOLO
After having continously worked on solo piano concepts and pieces throughout the years, Smidt’s piano compositions were commissioned for the mixed media projects Bauhaus-Expedition and 100 Saiten Beuys in 2022. Both delivered a vivid mix of concert, exhibition, and informative art history to stages in Hamburg, Hannover and surroundings.
The solo perfomance “Magnetic Layers” for piano + live effects had been commissioned in 2018 in Grand Theatre, Groningen (NL).

By 2023, so many solo pieces had emerged, that a full-length deep-listening-album should capture this. After gathering funds for the production via a crowdfunding, Funkhaus Berlin turned out to be the perfect studio for this project. Boomerang was born, and with the great help of engineer Antonio Pulli
the 15-track album was recorded in December 2023. The album was released in January 2025. With a precise touch for detail, the album delivers one coherent story from beginning to end, featuring both the grand and upright piano, but also the palm mute pedal, as on “ZoomPunkt”.

TRIO
The first LS Trio started around 2012 in Hannover, and the work in trios soon became one of the main things. In this mini-format of a band, with drums, bass and piano, you have all you need - and plenty of freedom as well.

In 2026, the Lennart Smidt Organic Trio is about to record their first album, with Benson Itoe on electric bass and John Winston Berta on drums.

MORE PROJECTS
During the pandemic in 2021, Smidt led the production of Rüdiger Bierhorst album "Im Zentrum des Kreisels" as producer/arranger/sounddesigner, summing up the German singer-songwriter’s latest work.

Interdisciplinary work had started 2015 with experimental opera and performances (”After the Flood”, “Forgotten Matters”) together with film director Bernardo Zanotta on festivals in Groningen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nantes.
It continued in Berlin with workshops by the late Tristan Honsinger, and co-hosting the curated multidisciplinary improv jam “big bouncing charlie”.

In several duo occasions, Smidt shared the stage with his father, classical organist Ulfert Smidt - together they discovered new sounds on hammond & pipe organ in “stylus fantasticus”.

TEACHING
Smidt’s workshop and teaching concept Jazz as creative community music conveys a healthy way of learning music, that very much adapts to individual levels and experience of students. This workshop focuses on the basic thinking concepts behind Jazz and Improvised Music outside scale-based vertical approaches. It dives into playing unwritten music, making your own music in your community, finding your own expression within your capabilities, learning from each other, and supporting each other.

Currently teaching piano at University of Hildesheim.

shared stages with Yusuf Ahmed, John Winston Berta, Marcello Busato, Giuseppe Doronzo, Paul Engelmann, Esat Ekincioglu, Johannes Fink, Willi Hanne, Benson Itoe, Julie Mbodje, Liedfett, Hiske Oosterwijk, Aleks Skoric, Lucas Uecker, Yelmur, Kussi Weiss, ...