Darmstadt Jazz Institute
Coordinates: 49 ° 51 ′ 29.7 " N , 8 ° 38 ′ 52.7" E
The Darmstadt Jazz Institute is a globally recognized research and information center on jazz .
In Darmstadt , a city with around 160,000 inhabitants, jazz events take place every month in all areas from the traditional Dixieland to the cross - border avant-garde , but the Darmstadt jazz scene cannot be compared with that of Berlin , Cologne , Stuttgart or Munich . The name Darmstadt is now known in the jazz world through the city's jazz institute, which, with its work as an international information and documentation center , enjoys an excellent reputation even in the country where this music was born, the USA .
Today's Jazz Institute began in 1983. At that time, the city acquired the jazz collection of the well-known jazz critic and producer Joachim Ernst Berendt - records , books, magazines, photos, posters and much more. The widely acclaimed exhibition That's Jazz was based on this collection, which was then housed in the renowned International Music Institute . The sound of the 20th century , which was on view in the Mathildenhöhe Museum in 1988 and whose comprehensive catalog is still a well-received documentation on jazz history. As the collection continued to grow, the city decided to incorporate it into a jazz institute, which, in addition to pure archive work, should also support jazz life and jazz research through events and its own projects . In September 1990, this institute became a reality, initially operating from temporary premises in the John F. Kennedy House. The head of the institute was and is Wolfram Knauer , who received the Hessian Jazz Prize in 2002 for his commitment to expanding the institute's activities . On October 3, 1997, today's seat of the institute was inaugurated, the historic Bessunger Kavaliershaus . Sufficient workplaces are available to visitors here. There is also a small concert room in the vaulted cellar under the house, which is ideal for combining jazz music practice and theory. The Kavaliershaus has meanwhile developed into a meeting place for those interested in jazz - musicians, researchers, fans . The weather trumpet on the roof and the sculpture of the blues harmonica virtuoso Little Walter on Jagdhofplatz, unveiled in September 2001, also signal the new use of the building to the outside world.
Every two years the Jazz Institute organizes the Darmstadt Jazz Forum, the only regular jazz conference in the world. Researchers and musicians from all over Europe and the USA travel to the symposium to exchange opinions and experiences; the simultaneous festival sheds light on special aspects of music from a very practical point of view. The lectures are documented by detailed conference reports in thirteen books so far in the institute's own book series ( Darmstadt Contributions to Jazz Research ).
The Jazz Institute is home to one of the largest public jazz collections in Europe. These include specialist books and a large number of image and sound carriers - there are now well over 80,000 sound carriers in the archive , including 40,000 LPs, more than 20,000 CDs, plus shellac records , 45 RPM singles, 25 cm LPs, DVDs and videos , Photographs, posters, etc. The most used part of the collection, however, is the extensive magazine inventory with well over 1,000 different magazine titles, more than 80,000 individual issues - magazines from all over the world, going back to the 1920s. The institute's jazz index, the world's most comprehensive computer bibliography of the written information in the archive, is used by researchers from all over the world - now mainly via the Internet.
The Jazz Institute is not just a research archive, but an information center for everyone. This is noticeable to the outside world in the series of events organized by the Jazz Institute - in addition to the Jazz Forum, the workshop "Darmstädter Jazz Conceptions" (in cooperation with the Bessunger Knabenschule cultural center), or in concert series such as the "Jazz Talk", where musicians not only play , but in between also report about their music, their career, the possibilities such as the problems of a life in the jazz scene. On the last Friday of the month, musicians from the entire Rhine-Main area meet in the vaulted cellar under the Jazz Institute for the Bessunger jam session organized by the Friends of Jazz in Darmstadt eV .
Until 2009, the Jazz Institute published a guide to jazz every two years , a compendium with addresses and information on jazz in Germany. Since 2012 this address directory has only existed in the form of an online database at www.wegweiserjazz.de, which is supported and administered by the Jazzinstitut.
The jazz institute is accessible to everyone. In the user rooms in the Bessunger Kavaliershaus you can leaf through the latest of the sixty or so subscribed jazz magazines, listen to the recordings (LPs, CDs) or find out about nationwide events (workshops, festivals, etc.) from the brochures available. In addition to jazz, peripheral areas are also covered: rhythm and blues , Latin jazz , salsa, etc.
The Jazz-Institut Darmstadt tries to build a bridge between science and practice, between service for one of the voluntary work of many living music and careful documentation of musical developments from past and present, between regional cultural work and international discourse. The institute has meanwhile made a name for itself worldwide, but does not work in the proverbial ivory tower. Visitors are welcome and every question is taken seriously.
The Jazz Institute is a member of the IASA country group Germany / Switzerland .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. inventory overview of sound carriers . The November 2005 Jazz Podium lists 46,000 LPs, 15,000 CDs, 13,450 shellac records and 8,000 books