International Jazz Festival St. Ingbert

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The St. Ingbert Jazz Festival in the town hall (2013)

The St. Ingbert International Jazz Festival has been taking place in St. Ingbert , Saarland , since 1987 . In the past, the festival had various subtitles, such as B. Encounters . The motto since 2010 has been Experience .

History of the festival

Jörg Jacob
Moderator and from 1999 artistic director: Peter Kleiss

The St. Ingbert jazz pianist Jörg Jacob (1965–2006) and his friends, a circle of jazz music lovers, dealt intensively with the question of how one could organize a festival that dealt with a music genre that began in the 1980s was considered rather unpopular. The venues for the first St. Ingbert Jazz Festival were the youth center in the Pfarrgaßschulhaus and the “Café K” of the “Sauerteig” association. The artists came from the region. With a good 600 visitors, the festival met with an unexpectedly high response from the public. Because of this popularity, the third festival then took place in the St. Ingbert town hall. Artistically, the festival reached a higher level over time, guest jazz greats such as Albert Mangelsdorff , Archie Shepp and Charlie Mariano .

From 1991 the cultural office took over the organization under the direction of Elmar Peiffer. The artistic directors were Clemens Bott and Franz-Joseph Zimmer, who had already worked in the festival organization in previous years. From 1995 Hartmut Oswald took the place of Bott.

Because the number of visitors on the two festival days declined at the end of the 1990s, a new path was chosen from 1999. Peter Kleiss , jazz editor at SR 2 Kulturradio , became the new artistic director who had been involved with the festival for many years as a moderator.

In 2008 the festival was moved from the town hall to the Alte Schmelz ( mechanical workshop and event house ). This listed industrial ensemble offered even more space and was architecturally worth seeing. The festival was extended to up to six days, a church, the museum and the city's gastronomy were included as venues, and jazz workshops were also offered. In that year the jazz advancement award of the city of St. Ingbert, endowed with 3000 euros, was awarded as part of the festival . The winners were Julian and Roman Wasserfuhr (2008), Philipp Schug (2009) and Manuel Krass (2010).

In 2013 they went back to the town hall with a four-day festival for cost reasons. A working group supports the cultural office with new ideas and voluntary work. Yvan Tan took over the artistic direction.

Artist (selection)

Grace Kelly at the 2013 Festival

Web links

Commons : Jazzfestival St. Ingbert  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jörg Jacob (1965-2006) - initiator and organizer of the 1st St. Ingbert Jazz Festival 1987 at rohrbach-nostalgie.de
  2. St. Ingbert Jazz Festival at saarland.de
  3. Joint matter jazz at saarbruecker-zeitung.de