Kenji Herbert is a Vienna-based guitarist, composer, and improvising musician. Raised in Osaka and Kobe, Japan, and shaped by a decade in Brooklyn’s creative music scene, his work invites spontaneous dialogues between seemingly disparate musical and aesthetic worlds, resulting in a sound that resists easy categorization, yet feels at home in a wide range of contexts.
He leads a trio with Vinicius Cajado and Lukas König, whose debut album A Million Forests of the Fall (Unit Records, 2024) received the Austrian Jazz Prize for Album of the Year. The project weaves a compelling narrative that draws on influences from indie rock to ambient soundscapes, brought to life through the trio’s dynamic interplay. His previous releases include As If For Now (Urchin Records, 2021) and The Way the Light Falls (Inner Circle Music, 2016).
Herbert co-leads The Scruffy Herberts with Peter Herbert, as well as a trio with Jordina Milla and Sofia Labropoulou. He is a member of Andras Dés Quartet, Matthew Halpin Group, and Georgia Weber’s Sleeved Hearts, and contributed to Grammy Award–winning artist Arooj Aftab’s breakthrough album Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam, 2021). Along with Keisuke Matsuno, he was featured in Misaki Matsui’s 2017 documentary “mit Kenji & Keisuke – Brooklyn, New York.”
Herbert received his formal education at the Music Academy in Basel, Switzerland (2006-2008) where he studied with Wolfgang Muthspiel and graduated from Berklee College of Music (2009-2011), where he was mentored by Mick Goodrick and David Tronzo. He was an inaugural member of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute under the artistic direction of Danilo Perez.