Norbert Susemihl was born in 1956 in Hamburg, Germany. He began playing at 14 as a guitarist in his school band, "Papa Tom's Lamentation Jazzband," and switched to trumpet in 1971. After touring Europe with clarinetist Sammy Rimington in 1977-78, he made his first trips to New Orleans in 1978 and 1979.
In 1980 Susemihl returned to New Orleans to play in a Fats Waller revue, which let him join the New Orleans Musicians' Union. He stayed a full year to study the culture behind the music. Between 1981 and 1990 he spent three to four months in New Orleans each year, playing with the last living old-style musicians — Kid Thomas Valentine, Percy and Willie Humphrey, Jeanette Kimball, Chester Zardis, Thomas Jefferson, and Danny Barker — and leading his own Arlington Jazz Band with clarinetist Raymond Burke. He also joined the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble to explore 1920s classic jazz repertoire.
Today Susemihl divides his time between Hamburg, Denmark, and New Orleans, where he plays about 80 concerts a year as a guest soloist with local bands. His main project is the Scandinavian-based Norbert Susemihl's Joyful Gumbo, founded in 2002, alongside the New Orleans All Stars. He has recorded and produced over 50 recordings with his own bands and as a soloist, and in 2022 received the Louis Armstrong Memory Award from his hometown Hamburg for excellence in jazz.
