Quasimodo (music club)

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Entrance to the Quasimodo

The Quasimodo is a jazz club in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg . The well-known jazz and music cellar Quasimodo is located together with the Quasimodo Café and the Vaganten Stage in the building of the Delphi Film Palace and offers space for up to 350 guests. In addition to modern jazz , blues , soul , funk , rock , Latin American music and world music are played.

history

Stairs to the Quasimodo restaurant

From the beginning until the 1970s

The bar is located at Kantstraße 12a, at the corner of Fasanenstraße , in the cellar of the Delphis , which was built in 1927/1928 by Bernhard Sehring as a dance hall. At the end of the 1920s / beginning of the 1930s, the Delphi Palace was considered an often overcrowded “Mecca for swing kids ”, but it had to close in 1943 and was badly damaged in air raids by the Allies . From 1947 to 1949 an initially provisional reconstruction of the building took place in which a cinema with a large screen and 1000 seats, today's Delphi Filmpalast at the zoo , was set up. Concerts were held again in the Delphi-Keller restaurant under provisional conditions . In 1948 the cornet player Rex Stewart made recordings for Amiga with the Hot Club Berlin .

Presumably in 1967 the "Quasimodo Quarter" opened in the cellar of the Delphis . By centralizing and kurfürstendamm close location in West Berlin City - in the neighborhood are among other things, built also by Sehring Theater of the West , universities ( TU , UdK ) and the pub and restaurant landscape around the Savigny Platz - it was point of contact for Students, Berlin tourists, cinema and theater goers as well as "night owls of all kinds". It contributed to the city's reputation that Berlin was "open all the time" (thanks to the lack of curfew ).

Originally the bar attracted attention with a varied live program that was not limited to music, but then changed from a “student pub with a cabaret ” to one of the most prestigious jazz venues in the city. As early as November 1968, free jazz musicians organized "quasi" counter-events to the Berlin Jazz Days , which were criticized as "established" or "commercial" , thereby laying the foundation for the Total Music Meeting (which later mainly took place in the Latin Quarter ) . At that time, for example, Peter Brötzmann , Han Bennink , Gunter Hampel , John McLaughlin and Pharoah Sanders were there . The narrow, low and smoky basement bar developed also among musicians as a meeting place after concerts and a place for spontaneous jam sessions .

The time after 1975

In 1975 Giorgio Carioti took over the business and shortened the name to Quasimodo . International musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie , Chet Baker , Art Blakey , Chaka Khan and Pat Metheny soon appeared under the direction of the then Genoa business administration student .

Carioti made relatively little changes to the appearance of the Quasimodo, but enlarged the stage and invested a lot in the stage and recording technology. In spite of the inadequate framework conditions (including angled rooms, often a large and densely packed audience), the Quasimodo is known for the high acoustic quality of the live concerts and an expert audience. Despite a large number of "more suitable" event locations, it is still a venue in the framework program of the JazzFest Berlin and Deutschlandradio Kultur regularly broadcasts jazz concerts from the club.

The concerts, which take place several times a week, usually begin at 10 p.m. Critics criticize that the jazz portion of the program has been steadily reduced since the late 1990s, but this reproach does not apply on closer inspection of the concert history. Over the entire period of its existence there is a varied mix of different genres in the Quasimodo program , which - taking into account the commercial requirements of an event venue - is only changed gradually and subordinately for the sake of the changing public taste.

An unannounced appearance by Prince in 1987 after a concert in the Deutschlandhalle attracted particular media attention . In 1989 the blues musician Sidney "Guitar Crusher" Selby recorded a live album in Quasimodo. The band 55 Fifty Five is a regular guest at the club .

In 2019, the Quasimodo was named “Venue of the Year” by Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters as part of the “Applause” venue program award.

Web links

Commons : Quasimodo Charlottenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b luise-berlin.de - History of the Delphi Filmpalast at the Zoo; Retrieved May 6, 2008
  2. ↑ Its story can be read on delphi-filmpalast.de ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on May 1, 2019 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.delphi-filmpalast.de
  3. ↑ Quotation: “On two sides of the basement room was a large carbide spotlight. They could barely penetrate the thick air. Then there was the light from candles. In addition to their entrance fee, each guest had to bring one. "
  4. ↑ Rex did not like Fraulein Gerda. In: Der Spiegel , issue 32/1948, August 7, 1948
  5. ↑ Further evidence for the Delphi-Keller restaurant in: Irmgard Wirth (arrangement): Die Bauwerke und Kunstdenkmäler von Berlin. City and district of Charlottenburg, part 2, text volume, Berlin 1961, p. 336
  6. ↑ Achim Forst: FREE MUSIC PRODUCTION (FMP) - The History. In: fmp-label.de. 1981, Retrieved April 30, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Patrik Landolt: FREE MUSIC PRODUCTION (FMP) - The History. In: fmp-label.de. September 10, 1983, Retrieved April 30, 2019 .
  8. ↑ fu-berlin.de ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - WIR online (alumni magazine of the FU Berlin ): Giorgio Carioti is the soul of Berlin jazz (2006); Retrieved May 6, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fu-berlin.de
  9. ↑ quasimodo.de - archive from August 30, 2008; accessed April 30, 2019
  10. ↑ Grütters awards venue program award “Applaus” , deutschlandfunkkultur.de Kulturnachrichten from November 28, 2019, accessed on the same date

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 21.4 "  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 44.6"  E