This year’s concert of the BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin focuses on George Gershwin. “Summertime – The Fadcinating George Gershwin” is the title of the programme for this upcoming Monday, June 22nd. Since nine years now, the musicians of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper have taken breaks from playing Verdi, Wagner, Mozart, or Puccini to dig…
It has become a nice tradition for LA-based singer, songwriter, composer, producer Chris Bennett to visit Berlin for a week in the summer months. She’s been doing that since about 20 years now and she will be back this week for four consecutive nights at the A-Trane with two sets each night. Chris, who started…
The man who invented free jazz music with his groundbreaking 1960 album “Free Jazz”, a controversial saxophonist and composer who released many innvovative records over several decades like “This Is Our Music” (1961, notable at least for the brilliant “Beauty Is A Rare Thing”), “Science Fiction” (1971, with poetry recitations by David Henderson and vocals…
New York’s Vision Festival for Free Jazz, Dance, Visual Art, and Poetry, celebrates its 20th year from July 5th-12th. In various special concerts, there will be a lot of experimental, free, avantgarde, whatever-you-want-to-call-it Jazz at the Historic Judson Memorial Church at the beautiful Washington Square South. The opening night performances are dedicated to the AACM,…
It’s festival season in Europe and each year, there are more and more coming up – even in the smallest cities and towns you’ve never heard of. One of the biggest and oldest celebrates its 40th anniversary this year: the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. I’ve been visiting this one since the late 80s…
August 27th to 30th will be this year’s dates for the Jazzfestival in Saalfelden in Austria. Among this year’s acts is Chris Nightcap‘s “Bigmouth” with Tony Malaby, Chris Cheek, Matt Mitchell, and Gerald Cleaver. The American/Brazilian project “Return the Tides: Ascension Suite & Holy Ghost” by Rob Mazurek and Black Cube SP also promises to…
It is really a spectacular location – in the middle of huge cranes and machine halls on the grounds of the Blohm & Voss shipyard. You can only get there by walking through the tunnel which connects the harbour with the dockyard and which runs under the Elbe river. Shuttle buses are connecting the different…
It was a smooth show last night at the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg. The ECHO Jazz Awards 2015 were hosted by Gregory Porter (who also won one trophy and performed “Liquid Spirit” and “Brown Grass”) and Roger Cicero. Entertaining, no awkward lenghts, very good live performances, and short acceptance speeches from all winners…
I’m travelling to Hamburg tomorrow for this year’s ECHO Jazz Award celebrations. Today, awardees Branford Marsalis and Johanna Borchert together with jury member Karsten Jahnke, announced those artists who will give the laudations during the ceremony tomorrow. Among them are Klaus Doldinger, Pepe Lienhard, who served as musical director for Udo Jürgens for many years,…
It was just last week at an industry convention BBQ when I was spinning a couple of tunes from the great Ramsey Lewis. Those two songs in question are timeless tracks from his productive 70s period: the Maurice White-produced “Sun Goddess” from the album of the same name (1974) and the equally legendary “Brazilica” from…