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Katja von Schuttenbach was born in Hamlin, Germany. Still a high school senior, she began working as a free-lance journalist for BILD, the largest daily newspaper in Europe. An avid music fan, she focused on concert and record reviews, interviews with famous musicians, and reporting music news from the Hanover jazz, rock, and pop scene. Later, Schuttenbach worked as a general assignment reporter for BZ newspaper in West Berlin and was an occasional contributor to RIAS Berlin Radio. In 1990, Schuttenbach moved to California where she also worked on translation assignments and voiceover productions. In 1995, she graduated with high honors from San Francisco State University's Radio & Television Broadcasting program, one of the nation's leading programs in electronic media. She also interned with KRON/Bay TV and news radio station KCBS, both in San Francisco. One of the stories she covered during her time at KCBS was the final broadcast of KJAZ radio, the legendary Bay Area jazz radio station. From 1996 to 2000 Schuttenbach worked at Butterfield & Butterfield Auctioneers in San Francisco as Assistant Director of their world-leading Arms & Armor Department. During that time she oversaw the production of 25 sales catalogues and had |
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numerous appearances on national television (History Channel's "Tales of the Gun" and HGTV's "Appraise It!") as an appraiser of collectible arms and Western memorabilia. An account of her experiences in the gun world is featured in R.L. Wilson's book Silk & Steel - Women at Arms. Schuttenbach has written about jazz for Jazznow, Jazz Podium, and JazzWeek magazines. In Spring 2006 she was awarded a Master of Arts degree in Jazz History and Research from Rutgers University in New Jersey. The topic of her master's thesis — and current book project — is the life of German bebop pianist Jutta Hipp. Hipp, after a brief career in Germany and New York during the 1950s, had abandoned her career in music and vanished into obscurity. The researcher presented her findings in lectures titled "Jutta Hipp: Painter, Pianist & Poet" at the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) in Newark, New Jersey; at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the University of the District of Columbia (all in Washington, DC); and in a feature story in the German magazine Jazz Podium. Other areas of interest to von Schuttenbach include "jazz as cultural property of the United States" and jazz oral history projects. She currently resides in Maryland and is the Jazz Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Email: katja (at) vonschuttenbach (dot) com
Jutta Hipp, Jazz Podium | Read more >> |
2011, Katja von Schuttenbach | Photo by Ernest Gregory