Double bass player and composer Oliver Potratz was born in Hamburg, Germany. Since studying with John Hollenbeck and Greg Cohen at the Berlin Conservatory, he has played as a sideman and bandleader in over fifty countries and at various jazz festivals all over the globe and played classical solo concerts with several renowned German orchestras. He also plays contemporary classical music and composes works for central Asian orchestras in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and was recently invited to the Buenos Aires tango festival. Since the beginning of 2016 he has directed the German-Afghan Safar music project at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar.