Henrik Schwarz

Henrik Schwarz got his start making soulful house music indebted to Chicago and Detroit, but the German DJ/producer didn’t waste much time in pushing beyond the limits of the dance floor. Born in Bergatreute in 1972, he started producing in the late ’90s, as Midwestern American sounds were sweeping through German techno and had underground hits with the toe-scuffing funk of 2005’s “Leave My Head Alone Brain” and the dubby deep house of 2006’s “Where We At,” featuring Dixon, Âme, and Derrick L. Carter. With songs from Pharoah Sanders and Arthur Russell, his 2006 DJ-Kicks mix hinted at passions beyond club music, and beginning in the 2010s, a series of collaborations with jazz pianist Bugge Wesseltoft put his soulful instincts in the service of more abstract musical forms. On 2015’s Instruments, he even teamed up with Tokyo Secret Orchestra on a collection of symphonic versions of his own songs, closing the circle between classic house and the classical tradition.