Jul 22, 2026 12:37 PM
In Memoriam: Rodney Holmes, 1966–2026
Drummer Rodney Holmes, a powerful presence behind the kit who emerged as an in-demand player on the New York scene…
“I tried to make a CD that I would like to listen to myself, so that there would be no walls between me and the listener,” Clara Haberkamp says of Love Maps.
(Photo: Marcus Sternberg)At the 2022 jazzahead! expo, the young pianist Clara Haberkamp played as one of about 35 showcase artists during the festival in Bremen, Germany. Amid the blur, and the inspiring embarrassment of potential riches in the dense weekend program, Haberkamp’s half-hour trio set was a minor revelation, marking her as a promising artist on the jazz map well worth keeping an eye on.
Four years later, Haberkamp’s musical journey continues to emerge, moving from the artful singer-songwriter ethos of her 2018 album Neon Hill (Traumton) through the 2024 trio outing Plateaux (TYX Art) and now with the release of her distinctive new solo album Love Maps (TYX Art). Also on her rangy resume is the completion of a Ph.D. thesis about accompaniment.
On Love Maps, Haberkamp’s natural diversity becomes her. She manages to carve out a cohesive conceptual throughline with her central jazz persona leading outward into improvisational and reinventive takes on Bach and Beethoven and the pop song turf of Phoebe Snow’s “Never Letting Go” and David Bowie-covered standard “Wild Is The Wind,” with her glowing vocals in tow. It all comes together, as a cogent portrait of an artist of broad, but highly discerning, musical tastes and skill sets.
From her home in Berlin, Haberkamp explained the impetus and game plan for Love Maps, the title of which stems from “an idea by John Gottman, who was a psychologist. And he said you can have a map for each person you like or you love. You know the fears of this person, but also what or also tiny bits of their personality. This CD is like a map.
“I like complexity and that you have different directions at the same time. You don’t need to be one thing but can be a lot of things. I integrated pop melodies, for example, with Bach’s ‘Air’ and Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ sonata. I also wanted to get with the listener and not to create distance or walls to the listener. There were some compositions of my own, and ‘Butoh And Ballet’ is quite avant garde, I think.
“I tried to make a CD that I would like to listen to myself, so that there would be no walls between me and the listener. This was the aim. In the end, I just chose what I liked.”
Bringing her fine singing voice into the equation was a measured proposition: “Wanting to sing again was also a natural decision. I didn’t feel pressure from anyone. I just wanted to do it. I didn’t sing so much in the last years because the piano was getting too much in the background.”
Although she reinterpreted standards early in her career, Haberkamp has in her more recent years taken to unorthodox subjects for jazz treatments, such as “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” — also known as “Falling In Love Again,” made famous by Marlene Dietrich in the 1930 film Blue Angel — and Gordon Ligthfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” But she noted, “I love being spontaneous with reharmonization. I can also write it down, but I love to do it in the moment because it’s all in the concert or on the recording. I have the feeling that the situation I’m in gives me so much energy that I cannot have in my own room at home. There are things coming out I have never dreamt of.”
Haberkamp came from a richly musical household, the child of two renowned classical saxophonists, including her mother, Ilona, who wrote the biography of famed pianist Jutta Hipp. Clara grew up studying piano and composition and now teaches in Berlin.
Of her various musical avenues, she noted that “I was always singing, but the main thing was the piano. I studied classical music until I was 19, and at 11 started to play jazz, too. At 19, I had to decide what I wanted to do. I wanted to do jazz, but was never really comfortable with my colleagues not practicing. Classical musicians practice a lot, and [my jazz friends] were saying, ‘Hey, why do you practice so much? Just chill.’” [laughs]
Stylistically, Haberkamp brings her own personal voice to the general world of jazz pianists who combine lyricism with virtuosity, classical colorations and improvisatory impulses — a world whose standard bearers include Jarrett and Mehldau. Does she feel connected to that school?
“Yes,” she says, “I see myself in that group. These are the pianists I grew up with and listened to the most. Fred Hersch came a bit later, because he did contrapuntal things. Polyphony is now a new chapter that I would like to get more into. But Keith Jarrett was the main thing for me. There are some pianists that are very en energetic, too. Clare Fisher is also interesting for me.”
Another ongoing project in Haberkamp’s musical world currently is Duo Azadi, a project with the accomplished Iran-born cellist Atena Eshtiaghi, whom Haberkamp met while living in Hamburg. In the duo, which has recorded an album (in search of a label at present), the musicians clearly exhibit a clear empathetic bond on musical material that can range from lyrical jazz aspects to classical maneuvers and moments of free improvisational abandon.
“She’s a great person,” Haberkamp says of her musical partner. “She’s a film composer and has won a lot of prizes. We fit together very well and are very close, even though she’s from a totally different place on the earth.”
On more sizable expressive canvases, Haberkamp has written for large ensembles, in and beyond standard jazz big band contexts. She explained that her large ensemble work was “also like a phase. There were some great projects in 2021 and 2024. What I’m interested in is crossover stuff, not the usual big band, but to write for different disciplines, different genres and then create an orchestra. I did it a few times. It worked very well, and I will do that in the future.”
Keeping options and future moves open has been a matter of artistic course for Haberkamp, who looks back on her career so far with circumspection. Along the way, she says, “It was natural that I had to put everything out in order to find my style. There were some ways that were maybe not so direct, but it was necessary to do it. You could always say, ‘Why did you think so much? Why did you overthink everything?’ But that’s my character. That’s me. So why shouldn’t I do that? That’s why I play this way, too, so I think I shouldn’t regret that.”
Does she connect with the concept that an artist’s work is never done and that the true artist is ever a work-in-progress? She laughed, paused and firmly answered, “Yes.” DB
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