Guitar Kitchen Vol. 1

Born in 1974 in Munich, Ilja Coric started playing guitar at the age of 13. He studied jazz guitar at the conservatory in Rotterdam and at the Berklee College of Music with Mick Goodrick, among others.

Ilja now lives in Berlin and focuses on film music. His work has been awarded at the Berlinale Film Festival, and some projects he worked on were nominated for and won the prestigious German TV award.

His music can be heard on documentaries for ARTE, countless short films and the award-winning German TV series "Danni Lowinski".

In his spare time he also works as a producer for Berlin-based DJs, with releases on Get Physical, including remixes for acts like Booka Shade and Rosenstolz.

• iljacoric.com

Pivo is an incredibly versatile artist. He received his first guitar and started playing at age 6, and at age 21 went to the American Institute of Music. In 2005 he started his own recording studio, a music publishing company and an online label.

Pivo has 30 years of live experience, both as a guitar player and as musical director, and has played on hundreds of recordings. Currently he plays guitar for Orange Blue, Volkan Baydar, Nevio and Adesse. He performs regularly at Berlin's nhow music hotel, where he backs artists such as Lou Bega, Mic Donet and Johnny Strange (Culcha Candela).

In 2007 Pivo toured with the London-based musical production "Abbafever" through Europe and Asia. "Sometimes", written and produced by Pivo for the Sat1 daily TV drama "Anna und die Liebe", was a hit with the show's viewers and started his work as a film composer. He scored the two seasons of the successful children's thriller series "Allein gegen die Zeit", which earned nominations for both an International Emmy Award and the "Deutscher Fernsehpreis 2010".

Pivo's musical roots are in blues music, and his early influences are B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Santana, who remain a constant in his diverse musical work.

• pivo.de

Jens Gebel is an outstanding multi-instrumentalist as well as an in-demand arranger and producer in rock, pop and jazz.

He started to teach himself to play keyboards and guitars when he was 5 years old. In 1994 Jens studied guitar and bass at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles and was awarded "Player of the Year" when he graduated. In 2001 he toured Hungary as the guitar player in bassist Dieter Ilg's trio. Among others he has played with Scott Henderson, Mike Stern and Joe Diorio. In 2003 he was awarded a fellowship from the Zelt-Musik-Festival Freiburg for his own project "Pickpocket".

Since 2004 Jens plays Fender Rhodes and other keyboards in the band toktoktok (3 German Jazz Awards). In 2007 he started the CitySound recording studio together with saxophone player Veronica Reiff in Freiburg, Germany.

• citysoundstudio.de
• Ensemble Carte Blanche

Dirk grew up in Magdeburg, a town in the former East Germany, and came to Berlin shortly before the wall came down in 1989. His early passion for Broadway standards foreshadowed the division of labor between composer and lyricist, as is common in that genre, that would develop years later in Almost Charlie - bringing to mind classic songwriting teams like Burt Bacharach and Hal David or Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

Once in Berlin, Dirk played guitar in several jazz groups before forming Almost Charlie in 2003. Since then Homuth and lyricist Charlie Mason have released three albums, including the 2013 "Tomorrow's Yesterday".

• almostcharlie.com

Christian is a very busy player in the German pop music scene. He was born in Germany to a South Korean mother and a German father and started playing piano at age 7, switching to guitar at age 13. He has used his own tuning system on the guitar from the beginning. He holds an audio engineering degree from SAE Berlin and started his own recording studio in 2013.

He has worked as a musician and songwriter with SIDO, BOY, Roman Lob, Lena Meyer-Landrut, Christian Durstewitz, Yvonne Catterfeld, Barbara Schöneberger, Kim Fischer, Anthony Thet, Sandhy Sondoro, Adel Tawil, Band ohne Namen, Gregor Meyle and others.

Christian is supported by Hughes & Kettner, Lehle, Voodoo Lab, Planet Waves and D'Addario.