SWR New Jazz Meeting

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The SWR New Jazz Meeting ( proper spelling SWR NEWJazz Meeting ) is an annual event of the Südwestrundfunk . It was founded in 1966 by Südwestfunk jazz editor Joachim Ernst Berendt as the Free Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden . Initially musicians from free jazz , later from avant-garde jazz and world jazz , were invited . The event offers the participating musicians “a secure field of experimentation” on which they can “pursue their artistic ideas” with like-minded people “free of commercial considerations”.

The invited musicians are currently given the opportunity to rehearse for several days in a radio studio in Baden-Baden and then to perform in public. Initially the studio productions were recorded and broadcast by the broadcaster; since 1973, both the studio productions and the final concerts have been documented and broadcast; some have been released on phonogram.

Lester Bowie in the mid 1990s

history

From the outset, Joachim-Ernst Berendt intended to give the musicians of the then still young free jazz a place where "they could research and experiment undisturbed by outside influences like in a laboratory."

The meeting initially focused on free jazz. As Behrendt realized that this direction had survived and the meeting had been canceled in 1972, he called the Free Jazz Meeting in New Jazz Meeting in order.

The Baden-Baden free jazz meetings from the late 1960s to the early 1970s continued, according to George E. Lewis standards for the following jazz festivals, on the one hand, because it turned out less solid groups or compositions, but more meetings within the meaning of musician-centric Events that gave opportunities for musical and intercultural exchange. In addition, the meetings had a similar function to the Darmstadt summer courses for composers. Like the later work of the improvisation group Company by Derek Bailey , the Baden-Baden meetings were “exemplary in their conception of placing musicians in a [musical] space in which there were hardly any imposed preconditions or rather the history and personality of the musicians themselves represented the essential preconditions. "

Christian Broecking points out another aspect that the meeting had for Berendt as the organizer in the first few years: At this meeting “he tested what was possible, and if it worked, he also brought it to the Donaueschinger Musiktage or the Jazz festival to Berlin . "

One of the basic conditions of the meeting is that musicians are selected “who do not otherwise play together, but who nevertheless show a common musical root.” The example of the 1969 meeting shows the clash of American and European avant-garde musicians: Steve McCall was the organizers of the Convince the meeting to invite the Chicago avant-garde musicians living in Paris - Lester Bowie , Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell , as well as the pianist Dave Burrell . In the Black Forest they met sixteen European musicians, including Albert Mangelsdorff , Eje Thelin , Alan Skidmore , Heinz Sauer , Gerd Dudek , John Surman , Willem Breuker , Terje Rypdal , Leo Cuypers , Tony Oxley and Karin Krog . According to Lewis, the Free Jazz Meeting can be seen as “an early example of an intercultural event between two emerging avant-gardes”. Lester Bowie said in an interview shortly before his death:

" I called it Gittin 'to Know Y'all because that's what it was - being acquainted with them, getting to know each other. "

The Gittin 'session of 1969 have, according to the ethnomusicologist Mark Zlobin the prospect of Affinity interculture promised a "Transnational performer-listener-interest group", exceeded in the audience and musicians different limits.

After Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Werner Wunderlich was responsible for the New Jazz Meeting between 1987 and 1990 , Achim Hebgen from 1992 to 2002 , Reinhard Kager from 2003 to 2012 and Günther Huesmann from 2013 . The musical arguments also changed with those responsible. For example , if the musicians called by Hebgen deepened the fusion with world music , Kager asked how “musical parameters can be fused in a contemporary way”. Rigobert Dittmann emphasized in 2009 that at the last meeting "in the clash of composition and improvisation, of acoustic and electronic sound generation [...], new synergies were developed and new production conditions tested at these meetings". At the same time, the public final concerts also changed: "Instead of the conservatory and concert hall, there were contemporary environments such as the laboratory and playing field."

meaning

According to Peter Kemper, "the meeting has proven itself as an innovation-hungry institution, where not only is there a sensitive reaction to the challenges of the current scene, but also emerging developments are reinforced: sensor and catalyst at the same time."

In the opinion of the broadcasting corporation, the meeting “has provided impulses for the diverse developments in European jazz emancipation since the 1970s.” Even if the impetus for founding the Globe Unity Orchestra was by no means (as the broadcaster thinks) due to the meeting in Baden-Baden is, leading musicians of the scene like Carla Bley , John Surman , Albert Mangelsdorff or Joachim Kühn were able to “develop long-lasting artistic connections with colleagues. The festival also provided a career springboard for young musicians who were still relatively unknown at the time, such as Bobby McFerrin in 1982. ”According to the expert press,“ his successors as jazz editors at this ARD station were able to congenially continue the tradition established by Berendt. ”

Line-ups / discography of the individual meetings

documentation

  • "All of Jazz - 50th SWR NEWJazz Meeting" (first broadcast January 14, 2018), SWR television. Director: Andreas Ammer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Peter Kemper Tanze Samba 2.0 with me Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 28, 2017
  2. ↑ a b 50: SWR New Jazz Meeting Jazzthing
  3. ^ Andrew Wright Hurley: The Return of Jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change New York City 2009, p. 114
  4. ^ A b c George E. Lewis: Gittin 'To Know Y'all: Improvised Music, Interculturalism, and the Racial Imagination
  5. ↑ Ch. Broecking Die Injection to Blackness , Die Tageszeitung , February 7, 2000
  6. ↑ so SWR jazz editor Reinhard Karger in the liner notes of Sequel
  7. ^ Message from the SWR Jazz editorial team, 2013
  8. ↑ Rigobert Dittmann: SWR New Jazz Meeting 2009 ( Memento from October 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ a b 50th SWR NEWJazz Meeting with Pedro Martins. Press release. Südwestrundfunk, September 20, 2017, accessed on January 14, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Lee Jeske says Globe Unity was founded in the fall of 1966 after the Berlin Jazz Days commissioned Alexander von Schlippenbach . After rehearsals in Cologne, the orchestra performed in Berlin at the beginning of November 1966 and recorded its debut album in Cologne at the beginning of December, a good week before the first Free Jazz Meeting in Baden-Baden . Lee Jeske: Free Players from Many Lands Form Globe Unity Orchestra. In: Down Beat 47/9, September 1980. pp. 28, 31-33. Quoted from Peter Stubley: Globe Unity Orchestra , accessed January 14, 2018.
  11. ↑ Unique anniversary: ​​50th SWR NEWJazz Meeting “All of Jazz” with rare recordings of jazz stars from the SWR archives