Manuel Schmid

In the organizer's words:

Manuel Schmid at Joly's Live Music Bar

Manuel Schmid was born in Altenburg (Thuringia) in 1984. From 1992 to 2009 he had piano lessons with Michael Scholler in the areas of rock, pop and jazz. Between 2000 and 2002, he took drum lessons with Alexander Tscholakov in the areas of rock and pop and between 2006 and 2009, he took singing lessons with Helga Dreßler and Claus Carell in the areas of rock, pop, jazz and classical music. Schmid also graduated from the SAE Creative Media Institute in Leipzig with a degree in audio engineering and has been working as a producer and sound engineer ever since.

He gained his first musical experience in the school band Kern and then as a top 40 musician in the band The Maniacs. Since 2000, the musician has also been touring as a singer and keyboardist with his own programs. In 2009, he played a series of concerts under the motto "Leben & mehr" (Life & more), which were accompanied by an album called "Leben" (Life). Many of the songs on the album were written by Kowarski. Most recently, he performed the program "Lieder aus einer längst vergangenen Zeit" live for the first time in 2015, reinterpreting rare classics of so-called East German rock. A recording of this program was released in summer 2017 on the CD "Deine Liebe und mein Lied - Live" on the label A&O Records, distributed by Edel AG. The cover version of the Lift classic "Nach Süden" contained on the CD took first place for several weeks in the radio program "Die 10: Ihre deutschen Hits der Woche" on MDR Sachsen-Anhalt. In July 2017, it climbed to 23rd place in the "Rock from Germany" category on Amazon 's bestseller list. In 2021, this program merged with the well-known singer Dirk Zöllner and has been extremely successful on German stages since 2024 under the title "Die schönsten Balladen aus dem Land vor unserer Zeit". In spring 2025, the SPV label released a live album.

Over the years, Schmid has not only gained experience as a soloist, but also as part of an established band. Since 2012, he has been the singer of Germany's longest-serving art rock group Stern Meißen, where he has succeeded greats such as Reinhard Fißler andRalf Schmidt alias IC. As composer, lyricist, arranger and producer, he played a key role in shaping the albums "Bilder einer Ausstellung", "Freiheit ist", "Es geht die Zeit..." and "Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra". In addition to radio and television appearances, these releases have earned the band several 1st places in the Amazon and jpc bestseller lists in the categories "Rock from Germany" and "Alternative from Germany". In addition to his work as a singer and now also keyboarder for the combo, Schmid is also a member of the art rock band Cyril, the chamber music ensemble eccolo and the gospel choir Colours of Soul. Despite his many activities, he still finds time to continue working on his solo career. With "Seelenparadies", the young musician has produced his second solo album, which went on sale in summer 2016 and was a great success. Many well-known guest musicians such as Dirk Zöllner, Rainer Oleak, Peter Rasym and Anna-Marlene Bicking were involved in its creation. He was also able to recruit lyricist Andreas Hähle for some of the songs. In December 2016, the single "Hüte deinen Traum" reached number 1 in the radio listener charts on MDR Sachsen-Anhalt.

A new chapter was opened in 2018. Together with his long-time creative partner Marek Arnold , he released an album called "Zeiten", which intelligently bridges the gap between pop, rock, jazz and classical music and deals with current world events and human idiosyncrasies. After receiving great attention abroad and a successful tour in 2019 with almost 120 concerts, the band started working on new song material for various projects in 2020. In 2022, the new joint album "Ziele" was released, which also went on tour in 2023. It received very good reviews in the press, radio and television and was "Album of the Week" at Radio MDR Sachsen in November 2022.