Karlheinz Drechsel

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Karlheinz Drechsel (2014)

Karlheinz Drechsel (born November 14, 1930 in Dresden ; † October 5, 2020 in Berlin ) was a German music journalist and jazz musician. As Dr. Drechsel, well known for jazz, presented the program Jazz Panorama from 1959 to 1991 and was one of the founding fathers of the Dixieland Festival in Dresden.

Live and act

Inspired by his older brother, Drechsel played in various Dresden swing formations from 1946 and founded a jazz circle in the city that same year . Immediately after graduating from high school in 1949, he began his training at radio in the GDR , where he initially worked as an assistant director . Because of his preference for American music and “contacts with Westerners” ( Stasi jargon), he was officially dismissed in 1952, “for reasons of reorganization”.

In 1956 Drechsel became the drummer of the Elb Meadow Ramblers and was one of the founders of the Dresden "Jazz Association". He led this community until it was banned in 1957 in connection with the trial of Reginald Rudorf .

From 1958 he worked again for radio in East Berlin , where he staged radio plays and radio features full-time . The media historian Patrick Conley highlights Drechsel's features as successful examples "in which music means more than an acoustic relaxation or a hint of a change of scene". In addition, Karlheinz Drechsel created his own jazz programs; 1959 started his weekly program Jazz Panorama , which ran (initially on the German broadcaster ) until 1991; later, once a month, the Jazz Night on Berlin radio was added. He also moderated concerts and gave hundreds of lectures for the recognition of jazz in the GDR.

Karlheinz Drechsel with Dizzy Gillespie on May 9, 1981 in the Volksbühne Berlin on the occasion of the 5th Jazz Stage.

In 1964 he founded the GDR's first amateur jazz festival in Berlin. A year later in Dresden he organized the first representative concerts of modern GDR jazz (until it was banned in 1968). With the Leo Wright Quintet, which he brought to the GDR, he designed the first jazz show on GDR television (DFF). Drechsel helped organize the legendary Louis Armstrong tour in the GDR in 1965 , which he accompanied as a moderator. He also accompanied Albert Mangelsdorff's first tour through the GDR.

In 1971, on his initiative, the International Dixieland Festival Dresden came into being , in which he was a moderator until 2018. In 1977 he was involved in setting up the festival series Jazzbühne Berlin , a series of concerts with GDR and international jazz musicians that existed until 1989, which he also moderated.

From 1968 to 1974 Drechsel studied cultural and theater studies as the basis for his profession as a radio play director. He graduated in 1975 on the subject of “About the cultural, political and artistic specifics of jazz”. He has published several books on jazz and has also written for journals such as Melody and Rhythm .

After the fall of the Wall (1989), Karlheinz Drechsel also worked as a jazz presenter in the old federal states : at the Braunschweig Jazz Festival, the Hot Jazz Meeting in Hamburg, the Hameln Jazz Festival and at Jazz in den Mai in Mülheim / Ruhr. In the new federal states he was responsible for the development, design and moderation of the concert series Jazz in the Gewandhaus (Leipzig), Jazz in the Semperoper (Dresden) and the International Jazz Festival in Wittenberge / Elbe.

In 1989 Drechsel received his own radio broadcasts in the cultural programs of the (later founded) MDR and ORB as well as in the later joint programs of SFB and ORB Radio Kultur . In 1991 he took over the artistic direction and moderation of the Velbert international jazz festival .

Drechsel was a co-founder (1992) of the Berlin Jazz Treff Karlshorst e. V. Until 1997 he was its 1st chairman and since 1997 honorary chairman.

In January 2004, Karlheinz Drechsel was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his services to jazz , and in the same year he was awarded the first ever Medal of Honor from the City of Dresden .

His son Ulf Drechsel, who works as a jazz editor at rbb Kulturradio , initiated Drechsel's autobiography, which arose in the form of conversations.

Karlheinz Drechsel died at the age of 89 on October 5, 2020 after a COVID-19 infection in a Berlin hospital.

Karlheinz Drechsel with wife Annemarie (2012)

literature

  • Rainer Bratfisch: The most exciting thing in the world. Interview with Karlheinz Drechsel . In: Ders .: Free tones: the jazz scene in the GDR . Ch. Links-Verlag, pp. 61-74
  • Karlheinz and Ulf Drechsel: Between the currents - my life with jazz. Greifenverlag, Berlin / Rudolstadt 2011
  • Short biography about:  Drechsel, Karlheinz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Karlheinz Drechsel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katrin Koch: Dixie fans mourn: Jazz legend Karlheinz Drechsel dies. In: TAG24 , October 6, 2020. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
  2. ↑ Patrick Conley: The Partial Journalist. Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-050-9 , p. 134. In the same volume there is also a detailed description of Drechsel's directorial work Die Exoten Landschaft or Die Reise in den Spreewald (feature by Joachim Seyppel , 1968) , Pp. 171-173.
  3. ↑ Website of the Jazz Treff
personal data
SURNAME Drechsel, Karlheinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German music journalist and jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH 5th October 2020
Place of death Berlin