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Ever since the mid-sixties, Manfred Schoof has been considered to be one of Europe's outstanding jazz trumpeters. He directed his first group as long ago as 1965 and the instrumentation of the LP "European Echoes" he recorded at that time now reads like a "Who's Who" of the major European Free Jazz musicians. Since those early days, Schoof has played a substantial part in the development of Free Jazz in Europe, among other things with the exemplary New Jazz Trio, through his work with Albert Mangelsdorff, Peter Brötzmann, Mal Waldron, the Clarke/Boland Bigband and the Gil Evans Orchestra, the German Allstars and the George Russel Sextet.

Right from the start, Schoof was involved in what was probably the most important and most unusual big Free Jazz Ensemble, the Globe Unity Orchestra, and even now he is still one of the cornerstones of this great group. But Manfred Schoof not only belongs to the avantgarde of jazz, he is also involved in "other" forms of contemporary music, for example as a performer in the trumpet concerts of Bernd Alois Zimmermann (Berlin Festival Weeks) and Johannes Fritsch (Music of the 20th Century with the Saarland Broadcasting Company). He has himself composed film and television music and numerous commissioned works (for the Musical Festival in Donaueschingen in 1975) as well as choral and orchestral works for a number of different German broadcasting companies. Since 1972, Schoof has been lecturing at Cologne Academy of Music, and from 1990 as a professor. Numerous tours with various jazz groups have taken him as far as South America and Asia.

He founded his second quintet in 1975. The group worked on three LPs, one of which - the record "Scales" - was awarded the German Record Prize of the German Phono Academy (1977 Japo/ECM Records).

In 1980, Schoof won the 1st Prize of the Union of German Jazz Musicians (UDJ) for the LP "The Early Quintet". In the meantime, the 19-strong Schoof Orchestra founded in 1980 can look back on much-acclaimed performances, including appearances at the German Jazz Festival in Frankfurt and Berlin Jazz Festival. The Schoof Band was sent by the German Federal Government to Prague for the German Cultural Week. 1982 marked the start of several years with the pianist Rainer Brüninghaus as a duo.

Manfred Schoof is considered to be the epitome of the universal jazz musician in our time; his versatility enables him to be a trumpeter, composer and university lecturer all at the same time. And so, since 1987 he has also been a member of the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band and the European Jazz Ensemble. "Old Friends", the all-star formation founded in 1996 and comprising the best-known German jazz musicians (Albert Mangelsdorff, Klaus Doldinger, Wolfgang Dauner, Eberhard Weber, Wolfgang Haffner and Manfred Schoof), still exists today.