The first year for new artistic director Nadin Deventer shows a lot of new features for one of the oldest German jazz festivals. Day 1 (November 1st) will have 10 acts on five stages – all in the main building, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Highlighted as the “Haus Of Jazz”, the first day will…
Growing up with the music of Bill Withers, I always thought that “Lean On Me” was the least attractive. Which of course still means that it’s an amazingly great piece of music, coming from the mind of this brilliant artist. And so it was this particular song last night at Neukölln’s Heimathafen where José James…
It’s been an incredibly busy summer which just last Sunday, culminated in our first ever terrace concert in our beer garden. We hosted the wonderful singer Desney Bailey who, together with Joel Holmes on keys and Daryl Taylor on bass, brought a great mix of standards and soul tunes from Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and…
It’s been two months now since my last post here – summer season is incredibly busy at our beautiful beer garden. Nevertheless, I’m constantly listening to new music and I also discovered a wonderful soul station on the web (thank you Frank). Please check out www.soulradio.nl which features a lot of the music I grew…
Apologies first of all for not posting anything in the past two weeks. It’s that time of year again when all of a sudden, the weather changed from cold and wintry over Easter to almost summer-like temperatures within just a couple of days. So we moved out again from our Prenzlauer Berg apartment to our…
Palatia Jazz goes into its 22nd year in 2018. Hard to believe that it’s been this long. And congratulations! The fact that internationally known acts, with a focus on Europe, play in various cities and breathtakingly beautiful locations in the hearty Pfalz region, seems like a hot recipe. If you plan to visit, don’t forget…
For International Women’s Day, we focus on a very special songwriter. Our playlist for today consists of songs that were written or co-written by Carole Bayer Sager who wrote her first Number 1 hit back in 1966 (a very good year 😉 “A Groovy Kind Of Love” for The Mindbenders (later covered by Phil Collins)….
Legendary singer Dionne Warwick, now 55 years in business, is still on the road and recently added a few dates in Europe. We still fondly remember her last concert here in Berlin where she moved half the audience to tears. We just wanted to let you know where she will stop during her European tour…
No, I haven’t seen this year’s winner, “Touch Me Not” by Romanian director Adina Pintilie, nor the Silver Bear winner, “Twarz” by Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, simply because I wasn’t interested in both stories. But it was an especially strong year for German movies (“Transit” at times a bit confusing though), even though they didn’t…
In this year’s competition, I couldn’t really relate to any of the movies’ characters or plots recently. In Cédric Kahn‘s “La Prière”, a bunch of ex-junkies try to start a new life in a monastery. During all the prayers and praises to god in the movie, I couldn’t stop asking myself if hardcore junkies who…