Ralf Schulte-Bahrenberg

Ralf Schulte-Bahrenberg (* 1934 ; † January 2010 ) was a German concert promoter for jazz, pop and rock and an art dealer.

Schulte-Bahrenberg led (as a businessman) with Joachim-Ernst Berendt from 1959 to 1961 the Essen Jazz Days (with concerts in the Grugahalle ), one of the first major German jazz festivals of the post-war period after the one in Frankfurt ( German Jazz Festival ). For example, there was a concert with Dave Brubeck and Bud Powell (with Oscar Pettiford , Kenny Clarke , Coleman Hawkins ) in 1960 , which was also released as a record. In his own words, those were years of apprenticeship for Berendt too; Schulte-Bahrenberg lost a lot of money at the time because of conflicts with Norman Granz . In 1964 he founded the Berlin Jazz Days with Berendt ( George Wein was also involved ). He was the commercial director of the Berlin Jazz Festival until the 1980s. In 1980 there was a heated argument with the artistic director George Gruntz . Schulte-Bahrenberg broke away the income; he blamed Gruntz's supposedly very jazz-puristic programming. Since the two no longer spoke to each other, this escalated in 1981 in a court case, after which the Jazz Days had to be renamed Berlin JazzFest. The organizer was no longer Schulte-Bahrenberg, but the Berliner Festspiele GmbH.

Schulte-Bahrenberg was also a co-organizer of the German concerts of the Rolling Stones and The Beatles . In 1964 he organized part of Charles Mingus ' European tour , which led to a scandal with the difficult Mingus.

The art dealer was himself a collector of African art. His collected works of art were shown in the exhibition Tanzania - Glaube, Kult und Geisterwelt in Duisburg (Kultur- und Stadthistorisches Museum) 2007/2008 and Schwaz (House of Nations) in 2009 before they were sold at auction.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Rüsenberg Essen remains a jazz stronghold , podcast 2010
2. ↑ Last Skirmish , Der Spiegel, No. 46, 1980
3. ↑ Christian Broecking Let freedom ring , Berliner Zeitung November 3, 2004
4. ↑ Auction house Zemanek-Münster 2010 ( Memento of the original from November 19, 2012 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.