Christian Schöbel and Mario Meusel founded their duo in 1994 in Swabian exile, two years after meeting in Stuttgart. Dresden has long since become the base for a project that has now amassed around 3,000 performances in seven countries. The two take the name with a wink: their music is only too hot for the dull and unimaginative.
Schöbel began classical piano lessons at the age of five before Dresden jazz pianist Gert Hausmann led him to jazz. Mary Lou Williams, Vince Weber and the pianists from New Orleans shaped his touch. Meusel studied with Siegfried Ludwig in Dresden and with Andy Witte in Stuttgart, and gained experience in late-GDR rock bands. Both influences are clearly audible: beneath the rolling boogie bass, the drums set breaks, trace the line with brushes and set accents against the left hand.
The programme ranges from barrelhouse and stride to ragtime, swing and ballad. A dozen recordings have been released, including Ragged Times and Wundertüte. On Wundertüte, the two relocated Michel Camilo’s Coco Walk to the city of Mardi Gras, and the melancholy behind Fats Waller’s smile is just as much part of their world as their driving boogies.
On several occasions, 2Hot represented Saxony at the Hamburg Boogie Woogie Connection, the major meeting point of the European boogie scene. Together with Axel Zwingenberger, they regularly present Boogie-Woogie nights, for example at the Dresdner BallsportARENA or at the Tom-Pauls-Theater Pirna, and they accompany some of Tom Pauls’ programmes on piano and drums.
Schöbel and Meusel are also event organizers and radio presenters. They organized the Dresdner Boogie Woogie Sommer and the Hofmusik in Pieschen themselves, and their show Blaue Stunde aired on Apollo Radio. For children and teenagers, they developed a school concert with a gramophone, stories and lots of music, based on Schöbel’s final thesis in media education.
They gave the Dixieland Festival the title Dixie-Fieber 40 Grad, and the whole city is dancing. They celebrated their twentieth anniversary on stage with many guests at Zirkus Sarrasani, and during Advent they invite audiences to their own Christmas show.