German amateur jazz festival

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The German Amateur Jazz Festival was a music competition held annually from 1955 to 1967 in Düsseldorf for non-professional jazz musicians and bands with festival character . In 1965 the festival was expanded to become the International Amateur Jazz Festival .

history

In 1953 Stefan Buchholtz and Karl Heinz Lyrmann from the Hot Club Düsseldorf visited the Swiss Amateur Jazz Festival in Zurich , where they were impressed by the high level of the participants and the enthusiasm of the audience. According to their report, the Düsseldorf association decided to also host an amateur jazz festival, which, sponsored by the German Jazz Federation , took place for the first time in August 1955. The festival claimed to give an annual “overview of the status of jazz music played by amateurs in Germany”. The competition was carried out separately “according to the two styles 'old' and ' modern '”. Both bands and soloists were rated. The jury consisted of well-known jazz critics (such as Joachim-Ernst Berendt , Werner Burkhardt or Dietrich Schulz-Köhn ) and professional musicians (such as Hans Koller , Albert Mangelsdorff and Oscar Klein ).

The concerts of the festival were already sold out in the year it was founded; 26 bands had registered; In 1956 there were 64 bands and in the following year 105 formations. From 1957, therefore, regional preliminary decisions took place. The finals in three concerts with nine groups each took place in the Robert Schumann Hall in Düsseldorf . The festival was opened with a concert by the soloists who came first in the previous year's individual evaluation. The concerts were recorded by WDR and broadcast by him and other ARD channels; Excerpts were published annually on an LP .

"Many professional careers" began at the festival, such as those of Klaus Doldinger , Ingfried Hoffmann , Kurt Bong , Joe Haider and Volker Kriegel . From 1965 onwards, some bands played more unconventional music. In the second half of the 1960s, public interest decreased noticeably; In 1968 the festival was held again, now as the International Jazz & Pop Festival (with Alexis Korner as program designer). But the professional development of jazz went "beyond this type of festival, which meant its end."

literature

  • Jürgen Buchholtz: Amateur jazz festival: The institution of the 50s and 60s in: Peter K. Kirchhof (editor) Jazz City Düsseldorf. The history of jazz in Düsseldorf in the 20th century Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 2003, pp. 72–73.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cit. n. J. Buchholtz amateur jazz festival: The institution of the 50s and 60s in: Jazz City Düsseldorf , p. 72
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen von Osterhausen Jazzland - Festivalland , in Robert von Zahn (Ed.): Jazz in North Rhine-Westphalia since 1946 . Emons-Verlag, Cologne 1999, p. 94
  3. ^ Siegfried Schmidt-Joos breaking out of the Die Zeit Convention , October 22, 1965
  4. ↑ Jazz City Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf 2003, p. 24
  5. ↑ H.-J. von Osterhausen Jazzland - Festivalland , in R. von Zahn (Ed.): Jazz in North Rhine-Westphalia since 1946 . Cologne 1999, p. 111