Harald Eckstein

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Harald Eckstein (* 1938 ; † July 2018 ) was a German jazz musician (piano). As a musician, he influenced the north German jazz scene and in the 1960s, with his Harald Eckstein sextet, belonged to the style-defining bands of the Bremen and Bremerhaven jazz scene.

Life

Harald Eckstein originally came from Ulm , where he made his first appearances as a jazz pianist at the end of the 1950s and was considered one of the city's jazz stars around the then Ulm jazz bar "Gaslaterne". He was an amateur musician and actually worked as a commercial artist . At the beginning of the 1960s he moved with his wife to Bremen, where he found a job at the advertising agency Wächter and later went into business for himself.

In Bremen he also founded the Harald Eckstein Sextet , to which, in addition to Harald Eckstein (piano), Josef "Sepp" Blecher (bass), Ed Kröger (tenor horn, trombone), the African American William McKay (trumpet), Rolf Schmidt (drums) and Jochen Voss (saxophone) belonged. Eckstein's group appeared as a combo , initially as a quintet or later as a sextet, especially in the Bremerhaven jazz club "Chico's Place" founded in the late 1950s . Back then it was a club to which the black GIs stationed in Bremerhaven- Weddewarden went and played, and in which there were "sometimes huge sessions with great musicians". At the beginning of 1965, the sextet played in Bremen for the reopening of the Lila Eule jazz bar  - after it moved to Bernhardstrasse in the Bremer Viertel  - where Eckstein's group became a house band and performed there regularly twice a week. In 1965 and 1966 they took part in the jazz festivals in the StuBu of the Bremen Student Union .

The band was stylistically based on modern jazz and preferred hard bop and soul jazz . The "brilliantly well-rehearsed sextet" successfully took part in the amateur jazz festival in Düsseldorf , the German jazz festival in Frankfurt am Main , the amateur jazz festival in Zurich and the one in Vienna. In 1965, Zeit paid tribute to the band's sense of style. In the same year Siegfried Schmidt-Joos shot a portrait of the Harald Eckstein Sextet for Radio Bremen under the title “Jazz im Teufelsmoor ”; The filming location was the former “Jazzmühle” in the district town of Osterholz-Scharmbeck in Lower Saxony, north of Bremen and on the edge of the Teufelmoors . Winner of the Düsseldorf Amateur Jazz Festival in 1966, the band traveled to Canada and the United States, where they gave concerts in Montreal, New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island.

After some of the amateur musicians had returned to their original professions, the sextet gradually broke up. Eckstein reduced the band to a quintet and continued to play in the Lila Eule. From the 1970s, the number of appearances decreased; however, the band remained a springboard for younger musicians such as the double bass player Sigi Busch or the drummer Hannes Clauss . Eckstein's quintet continued to receive awards, such as the Lower Saxony Jazzpodium Prize in 1988. In 1989 the band had one of their last appearances in what was then the Bremen jazz club "Dix", which was located in the Tivoli skyscraper at Bahnhofsplatz .

In 2000 Eckstein moved with his wife to Worpswede near Bremen. Harald Eckstein died in July 2018 at the age of 79 or 80.

literature

  • (ms): Five whites and one black make black soul jazz music . In: Weser courier . April 25, 1965, p. 12 .
  • Christian Emigholz: A Chapter in Bremen's Jazz History. The pianist Harald Eckstein, who shaped the Lila Eule in its early years, has died . In: Weser courier . September 15, 2018, p. 23 (obituary).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Peter Bluhm: When jazz came to the Danube . In: Augsburger Allgemeine . December 11, 2015 ( online article at augsburger-allgemeine.de [accessed on September 15, 2018]).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Christian Emigholz: A chapter of Bremen's jazz history. The pianist Harald Eckstein, who shaped the Lila Eule in its early years, has died . In: Weser courier . September 15, 2018, p. 23 (obituary).
  3. ↑ Harald Eckstein Sextet. In: jazzindex.ch. Retrieved September 15, 2018 (information on the Harald Eckstein sextet, with a picture of the band at the Zurich Jazz Festival 1966).
  4. ↑ See Christian Emigholz: Jazz trombonist Ed Kröger celebrates 50 years of stage experience . In: Weser courier . October 15, 2013 ( online article at weser-kurier.de [accessed September 15, 2018]).
  5. ↑ See the event calendar in the Weser-Kurier in 1965 and 1965 on events organized by the Bremen Student Union in the “Studentenhaus” ( StuBu ) in Bremen, Ostendorpstrasse 1 (according to the Weser-Kurier's digital newspaper archive ); as well as according to the information provided by contemporary witness Roland Kutzki , at that time chairman of the Bremen Student Union.
  6. ^ Siegfried Schmidt-Joos : Breaking out of the convention. First international amateur jazz festival in Düsseldorf . In: The time . No. 43/1965 , October 22, 1965 ( online article at zeit.de [accessed September 15, 2018]).
  7. ↑ Lars Fischer: Book murder in Worpswede . In: Wümme newspaper . July 14, 2016 ( online article at weser-kurier.de [accessed on September 15, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Eckstein, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Ulm
DATE OF DEATH July 2018
Place of death near Bremen