BIO
Julius Gabriel is a saxophonist exploring a wide spectrum of musical practices. He investigates the embodied phenomena of improvisation and composition, engaging with the dynamic interplay between corporeality, acoustics, and transcendence. In his solo work, he pushes the boundaries of the saxophone through acoustic and electroacoustic approaches, building a growing body of performances and recordings that reveal a virtuosity in an existentialist sense.
Gabriel has been central to numerous collaborative projects. He recorded the trance-inducing albums Paisiel and Unconscious Death Wishes with percussionist and sonic sculptor João Pais Filipe, and co-founded the avant-garde group Das Behälter with transfeminist lyricist Xenia Ende, producing The World Is All That Is The Case and Star of the Future. He performed free improvised music in a quintet with Savina Yannatou, Agustí Fernández, Barry Guy, and Ramón López published as In the Light of the Current Myth, and formed the jazzcore band Ikizukuri with bassist Gonçalo Almeida and drummer Gustavo Costa, featuring trumpeter Susana Santos Silva.
His collaborations extend across global musical traditions, working with Hindustani sitar player Navya Rudrappa, Carnatic violinist Sumanth Manjunath, mridangam player Yashwant Hampiholi, and kologo artist Guy One. Mentorship from jazz legend Gunter Hampel also shaped his artistic development. Gabriel’s versatility spans genres from space rock with Solar Corona and metal with Moral Collapse and Névoa to jazz-punk with Sereias and large experimental collectives such as The Dorf, which has featured FM Einheit and Caspar Brötzmann.
He is a member of the Blue Shroud Band, an international ensemble of fourteen musicians with expertise in baroque, contemporary, jazz, and improvised music, and has performed with the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, both led by bassist and composer Barry Guy. Beyond his work as a saxophonist, Gabriel has served as a researcher and musical director for contemporary dance, sound choreographies, and performative lectures by Luísa Saraiva and Carlos Azeredo Mesquita.
Gabriel has held artist residencies in Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, and India, and toured extensively across independent, underground, and major cultural venues, including the National Concert Hall (Dublin), Southbank Centre (London), Alte Oper (Frankfurt), Luxembourg Philharmonie, Witold Lutosławski (Concert Studio Polish Radio), National Forum of Music (Wroclaw), Indian Music Experience Museum (Bangalore) and festivals such as Jazzfest Berlin, Unerhört!-Festival, Fusion Festival, Moers Festival, Open Source, Zappanale, Keroxen, Ad Libitum, Krakow Jazz Autumn, Jazztopad Festival, Jazz em Agosto, Milhões de Festa, Tremor, Primavera Sounds, and Waking Life.
Born in 1988 in East Berlin, Gabriel studied at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, completing courses in both the Jazz Department and the Institute for Computer Music and Electronic Media. He participated in orchestral and chamber music projects in contemporary music, as well as interdisciplinary projects with the Institute of Contemporary Dance, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music as a Jazz Performing Artist.
PRESS VOICES
"The young Julius Gabriel plays ferocious baritone"
New York City Jazz Record
"Gabriel demonstrated that there can be virtuosos in non-conformist practices"
Passos na Floresta
"Wonderfully meditative tracks which place you somewhere quite strange...Gabriel’s sax lets you soar through a varied topology of the mind"
The Fragmented Flaneur
"An acid sonic world full of diversified sound qualities...a minimalist yet absorbing dramatism"
Nowe Idzie od Morza
"Not only a jazz experimentalist...a world of encounters that passes through Afro influence, similar to the sphere of Sun Ra...to even more hazy and dark landscapes"
Galeria Zé do Bois