This seventeenth edition of Jazzdor Festival Strasbourg Berlin was an emotional occasion, being the last under the artistic directorship of Philippe Ochem, who is retiring after almost 40 years running Jazzdor. His successor has already been named: Vincent Bessières will succeed Ochem, officially taking up the role in 2026. (My interview with the new artistic director, which took place during the festival, will be appearing as a separate article.)
Artistically speaking, Jazzdor has always stood out as a forward-looking festival, promoting many premieres thanks to Ochem’s intuition for what will work and the vast network of contacts he has built up over the decades. One core idea is the facilitation of previously untried collaborations between primarily French musicians and those from other European countries. Another is the have the magic dust of some prominent guests from overseas – on this occasion Mat Maneri and Gerald Cleaver, for example. Jazzdor’s vocabulary is peppered with particular words which tell its story and reveal its character: research, courage, sharing, inclusion, and experimentation are all in the mix. This orientation certainly brings its rewards, but is not without risk: attendees have the opportunity to experience ten original productions in as many concerts, each performance offering the intrinsic values of freshness, novelty, and the pleasure of discovery. However, one sometimes does have to make allowances for the fact that the musicians may often have had little time to rehearse, play, and sometimes even to get to know each other properly.
We accepted the challenge and enjoyed the “menu” prepared by Philippe Ochem for the audience at the Kesselhaus, a multipurpose venue located just a few steps from Mauerpark, an iconic site in the German capital which stands as a reminder of the Berlin Wall, and of the divisions and antagonisms which created it.
Tuesday 3 June – Day 1
The opening act was “The Time Machine”, led by David Chevallier and inspired by H.G. Wells’s prophetic 1895 novel. This group’s goal was to perform jazz-inspired music with 17th-century instruments, which are completely unusual for this type of music. Theorbo, baroque guitar, tenor sackbut, harpsichord, and bass viol were the instruments with which Chevallier brought his dystopian musical vision to life. I found that the lack of dynamic variation from the harpsichord was just one of this group’s limitations. Maybe an expansion of the tonal and stylistic palette by involving additional instruments and musicians could bring more possibilities, but in general, I cannot avoid the fact that I found this show a disappointment.
The second set of the evening, “Sleeping Animals,” featured double bassist Sarah Murcia, drummer Christophe Lavergne, cellist Bruno Ducret, and violist Mat Maneri. For this performance, the musical centre of gravity shifted to territories where microtonality and polyrhythms reign supreme. Lavergne had the most complicated task: he provided a polyrhythmic bedrock throughout the concert as he traversed unusual tempos and rhythmic shifts, demonstrating total mastery of his instrument in a far-from-simple context. The three string players took turns improvising on a precise narrative line imposed by Murcia’s writing, consisting mainly of suspended and rarefied moments. Maneri contributed in a very calculated manner, primarily at a medium tempo. Bruno Ducret, a rising star following in his father’s footsteps, used a more articulate range of timbres and expressions during his interventions. An abiding impression remained: this group has fascinating potential to develop further.
Wednesday 4 June – Day 2
Gregory Dargent. Photo credit Ulla C Binder/Jazzdor
The following day, we returned to the Kesselhaus for another double-bill concert. The evening began with a solo oud performance by Grégory Dargent, a French musician who spent all of 2024 creating this show through artistic residencies in various cities across the Arab world. During these residencies, he gathered the photographic material that was projected behind him during the performance. Algiers, a distant and long-abandoned land, was a particularly strong source of inspiration for him. It is one of the nerve centres of oud music, traditionally used as an accompaniment to singing in North Africa. The audience was taken on an emotional journey through the intensity of the black-and-white projected images and through the exotic notes of this Arab mandolin for just under an hour, experiencing a feeling of the Arab equivalent of Brazilian ‘saudade’. This is all enriched by distortions and noise effects obtained through electronics and pre-recorded tracks. It was a concert that sparked debate. I found it a successful and brilliantly conceived experiment with a coherent and highly evocative narrative thread. This will surely not be the last time this project will performed – it certainly deserves it.
The second set of the evening featured a historic moment, the premiere performance by the Orchestre National de Jazz of “With Carla,” the orchestra’s very first artistic venture under the guidance of Sylvaine Hélary, newly appointed as its first female director. (Given the importance of this event, and what the O.N.J. means to the European jazz scene, please read our separate review of this concert – link below).
Thursday 5 June – Day 3
The third evening, French-Polish Evening, featured three sets with five French and five Polish musicians in three different collaborative contexts.
Photo credit: Ulla C Binder/Jazzdor
The first set featured Dominik Wania on piano and Christophe Monniot on alto saxophone as a duo. Wania collaborated with Tomasz Stanko for some time, and Monniot has a thirty-year career, including recordings with Daniel Humair and Marc Ducret. During the concert, they performed a repertoire of compositions written in different periods. Wania reworked several of them in medium tempo, giving them an expressiveness and phrasing typical of chamber music and more akin to the world of classical music. Monniot, for his part, played delicate lines that were never overbearing, keeping the music on a more mainstream track without taking too many risks. It was a good appetizer to start the evening.
Next was String 4et, an all-female string quartet composed of Amalia Umeda and Aleksandra Kryńska on violin, Maëlle Desbrosses on viola, and Adèle Viret on cello. The pattern developed for two or three members of the string quartet to take turns and to provide the rhythmic and sonic backdrop for the soloist’s inventiveness. Though the four musicians had only met a few hours before the performance to rehearse original compositions, there was great chemistry between them on stage, and the concert offered sudden moments of real beauty.
There was a particular anticipation surrounding the project which would close the evening: a French-Polish quartet featuring Tomasz Dabrowski. A widely acclaimed trumpeter in his homeland, Dabrowski is considered by some to be the artistic heir of the unrivaled maestro Tomasz Stanko – probably the most important jazz musician to come out of Poland. The lineup was completed by Lea Ciechelski on alto saxophone, who had also performed the previous day with the O.N.J., Kamila Drabek on double bass and Samuel Ber on drums. The performance as a whole somehow didn’t really catch fire, but we were nonetheless able to appreciate the solo talents of the two front-line players, particularly Dabrowski, who confirmed that he is a very interesting musician to keep an eye on.
Friday 6 June – Day 4
The last evening of the festival featured a triple bill of concerts. It kicked off with “Eggs, Stairs & Shells”, a new group featuring Elias Stemeseder on piano and electronics, Bo Van Der Werf on baritone saxophone, Felix Henkelhausen on double bass, and Samuel Ber on drums again. Stemeseder is a first-rate musician who has been on the scene for over 10 years. He made his debut in Jim Black’s trio with Thomas Morgan. The concert featured original pieces, compositions that were difficult and highly elaborate. The Kesselhaus can be a tricky hall to convey intricate music, and this was one of those occasions where the whole can seem less than the parts.
The second concert of the evening was by the quintet led by Hélène Labarrière (see top photo). A double bass player, Labarrière has been on the scene for at least 40 years. She recalled this in her introductory speech, remembering when she first started her career as a musician at a club run by Philippe Ochem and his wife in Strasbourg in the mid-1980s. Of all the projects presented at this festival, “Puzzle” proved to be one of the best conceived and most artistically relevant. First, the setlist included a series of songs dedicated to female figures involved in the struggle for freedom: Angela Davis, Jane Avril, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and Thérèse Clerc. These were then expertly arranged by musicians such as François Corneloup and Dominique Pifarely. Catherine Delaunay and Robin Fincker were the wind section, playing mainly clarinet and tenor saxophone. Simon Goubert played drums. Stéphane Bartelt created futuristic and bewildering spaces with his guitar, using skewed phrasing that respected silences without compromising incisiveness and substance: an authentic revelation. From a compositional standpoint, the timbral blends were reminiscent of those typical of Henri Texier’s ensembles, with the melodic part taking center stage. It was an intense and concise concert where Labarrière showcased her compositional and instrumental abilities in a memorable performance.
Photo credit Ulla C Binder/Jazzdor
The final act of this authentic musical marathon was the project “The Ocean With Us,” a quartet assembled by double bassist Pascal Niggenkemper and completed by Liz Kosack on clavinet and keyboards, Sakina Abdou on saxophone, and Gerald Cleaver on drums and effects. It was a futuristic set during which Niggenkemper modified the sound and appearance of his instrument with additional equipment that allowed him to modulate the sound and add new colors to the palette. Gerald Cleaver’s drumming was particularly visionary. He was also engaged in spoken word and was more inspired than in previous performances (we have recently seen him in Benoit Delbecq’s quartet). He is now an established specialist in a certain way of interpreting contemporary jazz drums. Saxophonist Abdou with her superb inventiveness absolutely confirmed why the international buzz about her playing has been increasing.
This visionary and highly impactful finale set the seal on a fascinating edition of the Berlin Jazzdor festival. It had been a journey through (mostly) successful experiments; it was also a litmus test, based on the opportunity to make many contrasting readings, of European jazz at its most advanced. Not least, it was also a hopeful glimpse into the future.
Francesco Spezia was the guest of Jazzdor
