Science, craftsmanship and workshops: the Berlin Jazz Festival has a lot planned for its 60th birthday. But there’s also some great music. The performance of an octogenarian is touching and a female ensemble with a gender-conscious drummer is exceptional.
The fact that the Berlin Jazz Days, programmed by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, began in the traditional habitat of high culture sent strong signals: the city at the forefront opened its windows to the world and made it clear that the diversity of voices and love of freedom were no longer foreign words in post-war West Germany. None other than soon-to-be Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King wrote the premiere’s preface and assured the divided city: “Everybody’s got the blues.”
In the upper foyer of the Berliner Festspiele House, where 1981 in “Berlin Jazz FestivalThe renamed festival has been running for several years now and televisions have been installed. On the screens you can see what it was like when jazz, the suspiciously looked upon basement kid, became socially acceptable. Recordings of Philharmonic performances by the Ornette Coleman Quartet or Herbie Hancock from the ’70s and ’80s flicker. We will also screen an old black and white documentary that explores the question: “Free Jazz – incomprehensible or popular?”
However, the four-day festival doesn’t allow itself to be overly nostalgic on its birthday. On the contrary: 60 years after its entry into the realm of high evening fashion, jazz is back on the streets again. And in the true sense of the word. As part of the “Community Lab”, the festival musicians hold workshops for children or visit refugee facilities in the Moabit district of Berlin. For Jazzfest curator Nadine Deventer this street work is a heartfelt affair similar to the “Research Lab” set up on the occasion of the anniversary, in which the Jazzfest archive is used for a critical scientific examination of the history of the festival, also in relation to “gender and race”.
Jazz as a social worker, a catalyst for social development in a troubled neighborhood or as an object of self-accusatory reevaluation (fortunately it was not possible to prove that the word “Upper Indian” was ever sung during the “Chattanooga Choo Choo” during the Jazz Festival ) – it’s absolutely natural. But it fits well with the philosophy of Deventer, who set himself the task of opening the dignified jazz festival, making it more feminine and bringing it into dynamic movement. For example, in the direction of an immersive artistic experience with dissolved hierarchies between audience and speakers, as he impressively demonstrated in 2019, when he had Anthony Braxton play at the Gropius Building with 60 musicians. The artists of the jazz diaspora invited below have not always been able to compete with them in terms of relevance.
This however does not apply to the 60th birthday programme. There’s a good mix of highly regarded newcomers (such as US alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin), well-known names beyond the realms of free jazz and personalities who are fondly remembered in Berlin. This applies, for
example, to the Swedish trumpeter Goran Kajfeš, who performed in 2001 as part of Nils Landgren’s Scandinavia focus, probably the most informal jazz festival of this millennium. The 54-year-old Kajfeš is on stage at the Festival Hall with his sextet Tropiques. This is reminiscent of Miles Davis in its dense layering of ostinato figures, Moog motifs and subtly effects-enhanced trumpet solos, but also reveals characteristics of remix culture and Nordic string folklore. “Bitches Bullerbrew,” so to speak. Violinist Josefin Runsteen abuses her instrument so intensely that her bow breaks.
Exceptional figure on drums
Anna Högberg also demonstrates how stubborn Swedes can be with her ensemble Extended Attack. In the Scandinavian suite titled “Lonely Sailor”, brutalist elements such as angry, distorted and roaring city trombones alternate with heavy doom metal, gnarly indie rock or microtonally slippery sea shanties.
The anniversary motto of the Jazz Festival – “Past – Present – Future. Still Digging” – pianist Kris Davis, born in Canada in 1980, does it justice in a special way. Like a careful archaeologist, together with Val Jeanty she discovers various layers of piano geology on turntables and laptops, electric bassist and double bass player Nick Dunston and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. You notice an angular relic of Cecil Taylor or an amber glow of Olivier Messiaen’s chord shimmers. The music ranges from the noisy free-funk of Ronald Shannon Jackson (“Alice in the Congo”) to hip-hop à la Afrika Bambaataa to the effortless soul jazz of Geri Allen (“The Dancer”). A great concert. Also because Terri Lyne Carrington, as founder and director of Berklee’s “Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice”, proves to be one of the most exceptional figures in the history of jazz drumming in all genres.
At every birthday party there should be a guest who is already slightly drunk, wearing a party hat and encouraging people to dance. In Berlin the Sun Ra Arkestra willingly accepts this role. However, do not be fooled by the extravagant presentation of the group led by Knoel Scott in the absence of the centenary (!) Commander Marshall Allen: there is one hidden behind the musicians dressed as astronauts, pharaohs or carnival princes and their singer Tara Middleton Big sparkling and clean band with exceptional soloists. Everyone can decide for themselves whether the reference to the pop music of the first half of the last century with stride piano, swing tunes, Chicago blues or Latin melodies is ambiguous or simply very suitable for cruise ships. The Afrofuturistic party with polonaise in the room and a final invitation to leave the earth for space was certainly fun.
Joachim Kühn delivers the most touching earthly moment during the anniversary celebration. The pianist, awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in April, tells how he fled the GDR in 1966 and immediately received an invitation to the Berlin Jazz Days. This performance made everything else possible, the world-famous musician explains to an enthralled audience, and is deeply indebted to the festival.
In the concert, the octogenarian presents his brand new trio with the two Frenchmen Thibault Cellier on double bass and Sylvain Darrifourcq, who are half his age. And it is a truly shocking experience to see how Kühn seems to liquefy the piano notes like hot lava and make them erupt again and again. A few months ago Kühn announced that he intends to say goodbye to the concert stage forever at the end of the year. Given his exuberant enthusiasm for the game, it’s hard to believe. As in the case of jazz, which has been celebrated with such devotion in
Berlin for 60 years, there is still too much life left to put an end to it.