This year JazzFest Berlin marked its 60th anniversary with an outstanding programme and a couple of special strands to mark the anniversary.
These celebrations focused on the Berlin community, in particular on that in the Moabit district, an area in the centre of Berlin that is extremely diverse in terms of its population with significant numbers of Turkish and Syrian inhabitants. The festival mounted an extensive programme in Moabit, culminating in the Sunday Community Walk on the final day of the festival. This began at the Jazz Institute with a concert that featured various acts, a children’s event in which they conducted a piano trio followed by performances by Syrian and Turkish choirs, the latter being composed of teenage girls and four men, accompanied by a couple of saz players.
The walk took place in the area by the side of the canal and the river and featured occasional pop up improv sessions and open air performances involving rappers from the communities, and bands from the main concert programme, including the Otomo Yoshihide Big Band. The culmination of the day took place in the Refo Moabit Church with performances by the choirs that had performed earlier in the day, the Musho duo of Sofia Jernberg and Alex Hawkins and a group of improvising musicians who played on the church balcony.
A complementary strand of the celebrations involved a two day seminar and a publication reflecting on the history of the festival. Four previous Artistic Directors joined the current Director, Nadin Deventer, to discuss the way the festival has grown. Nadin emphasised that her highlight of this year’s festival was the Community Project and related performances, and that this was an important development for the festival.
It was fascinating to learn that major artists, such as Sarah Vaughan, Abdullah Ibrahim and Miriam Makeba, had been booed at the festival for being too mainstream. It was agreed that this was unlikely to happen today, and that the Berlin audience, while maintaining its penchant for contemporary jazz, has become much more tolerant.
Turning to the main festival programme, highlights included three piano led groups. Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons impressed with its ability to embed Davis’ melodic ideas within an open improvised setting, and to integrate the sounds of Val Jeanty‘s electronicsand Terri Lyne Carrington’s explosive but totally supportive drumming into a cohesive group sound.
Joachim Kuhn led his French trio with bass player, Thibault Cellier and drummer Sylvain Darrifourcq, chosen for their ‘French way, with lightness, speed and elegance’ (UK Jazz News review of their album by Frank Graham). Kuhn, now in his 80s, moved from elegant compositions to high energy improvisation driven by the strong and inventive support from Cellier and Darrifourcq. Each piece built up to a strong climax at which point Kuhn either returned to the tune, or just stopped. Sylvie Courvoisier presented her new quartet, Poppy Seeds with three key players from the creative New York scene, Patricia Brennan on vibes, Thomas Morgan on bass and Dan Weiss on drums. The combination of piano with vibes, effectively two keyboards, created very interesting and distinctive textures.
The festival maintains its strong links with the American scene; in the past this has been with the Chicago and the AACM scene, but this year it programmed a more varied set of players from the USA. Drummer/composer John Hollenbeck had two projects, both based in the backstage area where the late night concerts take place. The first was based on Martin Luther King’s The Drum Major Instinct speech in which he criticises the human desire to be out front and to be praised. There were three parts, each with the members of the group interacting with the recording of the speech, the first iteration featuring three trombones and Hollenbeck on drums, the second a group with guitar, accordion, vibes and Hollenbeck on piano, and the third with the whole ensemble. Many of the audience found the third repetition of the speech, one too many and drifted away. His second appearance presented his ‘Letters to George’ project in which the compositions are dedicated to a number of people with the first name George. The GEORGE group with Hollenbeck on drums, Anna Webber on tenor saxophone and flute, Sarah Rossy and Chiquita Magic, both on keys and vocals, explored very attractive sonic territory.
Darius Jones presented the German premiere of his commission from the Vancouver Jazz Festival, fluXkit Vancouver; this featured Jones’ excellent writing for the strings of Peggy Lee on cello, and the Zubot brothers, Jesse and Josh, on violin,and the very distinctive contrast between Jones’ powerful sound on the alto sax and the sound of the strings.
The festival on the main Festspiele stage concluded with a barnstorming performance by Otomo Yoshihide’s 16 member big band. This was a joyous performance with full on anthemic compositions, conductions from different members of the band and free collective improvisation. The encore gave us the Japanese bon dance, a participatory dance music very popular in the Fukushima area of Japan.
The energy and fun of the Yoshihide big band contrasted with an earlier rather lacklustre performance from the Sun Ra Arkestra, which seemed to miss the charisma of Marshall Allen, who no longer tours with the band now that he is 100 years old.
JazzFest Berlin has this year in its 61st edition maintained its standing as one of Europe’s most progressive jazz festivals and has broadened its remit through its focus on the different communities of the city.
