# The Jazzfest Berlin 2022 was more party than ever: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/11/22/jazzfest-berlin-2022-was-more-party-than-ever-video-photos/
- Published: 2022-11-22T00:02:04+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**After hybrid editions 2020 and 2021, normal operation again: And how! The Jazzfest
Berlin 2022 was more party than ever. In the renovated building of the Berliner 
Festspiele, people danced, strolled, listened and a lively exchange of ideas was
maintained. There were young discoveries and old heroes who stayed young. Four nights
of jazz with an increased fun factor – and a concert with fire extinguishers.**

Swing dancing expressly allowed! Long after midnight on one of the long evenings
at the Jazzfest 2022: The French “Umlaut Big Band” plays palatable swing, the free
jazz pioneer Sven-Ake Johansson steps in as a crooner with an old-fashioned suit
and hat, announces gently singing “Don’t forget that one November in Berlin” – and
in front of the podium some couples dance exuberantly to it.

![Tomeka Reid beim Jazzfest Berlin 2022 | Bildquelle: Camille Blake / Berliner Festspiele](
https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/aktuell/news-kritik/jazzfest-berlin-2022-108
~_h-364_v-img__16__9__xl_w-648_-be6819cc57a5436fe2e22755fd9495d5c6ac08f6.jpg?resize
=640%2C360&ssl=1)

A jazz festival can also be like this: a surprise package with sounds that celebrated
the encounter in a particularly exuberant way this year. Because after two Corona
years in 2020 and 2021 with online and hybrid concepts, the music was allowed to
sound again in front of physically present people. And that in the “Haus der Berliner
Festspiele”, which had been closed for renovation in recent years – and is now particularly
open to jazz – at the 59th edition of the traditional Berlin Jazz Festival, this
time under the motto “Moving Back / Forward”. Again under the artistic direction
of cultural manager Nadin Deventer, who will continue to organize the festival program
for the next two years.

“Playing the House”. Under this motto, nine different ensembles played around midnight
on one of the festival days at three different locations in the house to give a 
special sign of the revival of live culture at the first edition after the two years
severely restricted by the pandemic bands performed in the wide stage and backstage
area open to the public, in the upper foyer and in the box office hall. The audience
could stroll and discover sounds. And get almost up close and personal with the 
musicians. A trio led by drummer Sven-Ake Johansson just played in the middle of
the room, and listeners were standing and crouching not even a meter away from the
performers. You could have easily put your hand on the shoulders of the musicians.

Sniffing out sounds on leisurely walks: Apparently this worked brilliantly – and
the sounds were as colorful as possible, from the swinging party sound to the sonorous
exploration of identity in ensembles such as the duo of violinist Silvia Torozzi
and cellist Deborah Walker, who artistically transformed Italian folk songs about
bitter poverty, war and love into existential sound mosaics.

Folk songs and traditional sounds from different regions of the world were one of
the common threads in the program this time: with highlights on Ukraine (“Shadows
of Forgotten Ancestors”), Armenia (“Gurdjieff Ensemble”) and others. In addition,
there was an emphasis on major figures of European free jazz and on Chicago’s particularly
lively creative jazz scene. In 43 performances, an enormously colorful spectrum 
unfolded, in which moving moments with the free jazz masters Peter Brötzmann and
Alexander von Schlippenbach also had their place. However, for those in the audience
who were particularly willing to explore, it was impossible to hear everything due
to the many concerts running in parallel: you always missed some exciting performance.

![Ben LaMar Gay Ensemble beim Jazzfest Berlin 2022 | Bildquelle: Anna Niedermeier/
Berliner Festspiele](https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/aktuell/news-kritik/jazzfest-
berlin-2022-106~_h-364_v-img__16__9__xl_w-648_-be6819cc57a5436fe2e22755fd9495d5c6ac08f6.
jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1)

The jazz festival began early on Thursday evening with a classical string quartet
led by cellist Tomeka Reid, who played compositions by saxophonist Julius Hemphill
and sang with profundity – and it ended with the enchanting instrumental broadsides
of the “Supersonic Orchestra” by Norwegian drummer Gard Nilssen Festival Sunday 
night. More contrast is hardly possible.

The finale with the Supersonic Orchestra was perhaps the most spectacular festival
finale in a long time. This band consists of seven saxophones, four brass players
and three double bass players and three drummers each, and in some of their tracks
they all blow and smash at the top of their lungs.

In the storm of wild saxophones and rhythm players, however, poetic beauty was always
discernible. Well-known musicians such as Mette Rasmussen, Maciej Obara, André Roligheten
and Otis Sandsjö (saxophones) or Petter Eldh and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten (basses)
played not only with power, but also with sensual delicacy in this magnificent big
band.

There were around 100 hours and many exciting moments between these festival cornerstones–
as well as a disappointment (of all things at the best time on Saturday evening).
Some concerts are likely to resonate with some visitors for a particularly long 
time. A captivating theatrical moment was the concerto for 15 hand-held fire extinguishers,
which Sven-Åke Johansson had composed and is now conducting. A ten-minute opus for
fire extinguishers set up in a V-shape, which were activated by hand signals. And:
a hissing, foaming white reflection on musical means and their expansion, hissing
from right and left, which could also have come from the American avant-garde artist
John Cage. At the same time a show piece with a deeper seriousness: it has been 
a long time since the world needed fire extinguishers as much as it did in 2022.

A paragon of refined musicianship was the Borderlands Trio, featuring Canadian pianist
Kris Davis and her two American colleagues, Stephan Crump (double bass) and Erin
McPherson (drums). You rarely experience piano playing with such subtle nuances 
as with Kris Davis, a bass with such a secure intonation as with Crump and drums
that groove so quietly with a very wide sound spectrum as with McPherson: her (freely
improvised) concert was chamber music with a trance character, because the pianist
played frequent patterns that were repeated with subtle changes, and thus created
a gripping intensity – also with increases up to concentrated sound outbursts.

![Mette Rasmussen beim Jazzfest Berlin 2022 | Bildquelle: Cristina Marx / Berliner
Festspiele](https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/aktuell/news-kritik/jazzfest-berlin-
2022-112~_h-558_v-img__16__9__xl_w-994_-e1d284d92729d9396a907e303225e0f2d9fa53b4.
jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

The addition of the three offered cliché-free beauty of sound in particularly softly
tuned tones: soft music with captivating intensity, because none of the beautiful
tones seemed harmless. A discovery of the same line-up type was the trio of the 
young Estonian pianist Kirke Karja – with Etienne Renard on double bass and Ludwig
Wandlinger on drums. Also here: a sense for chamber music, for fine tuning and moments
of surprise in the free improvisational exchange.

A special emphasis this time was on free jazz as the most radical individual expression
of jazz – and as music that developed its own new strength in a time of a new upsurge
of autocrats in many political landscapes. He makes brutal music for a brutal time,
said one of the German free jazz protagonists, the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, 
decades ago. Today, many musicians can make this motto their own – and have every
reason to do so.

Peter Brötzmann, 81 years old and as intellectually curious as ever, was at the 
jazz festival together with Moroccan gimbri player and singer Majid Bekkas and drummer
Hamid Drake. The once impetuous saxophonist with the bushy beard and a double-breasted
suit with dark stripes that was deliberately too large showed himself to be a remarkably
sensitive sideman: He played – alternatively on tenor and alto saxophone as well
as on a metal clarinet – fine, simple lines to the songs of Majid Bekkas – and allowed
himself and the others many moments of pause to allow space for the tones. It also
showed how much sense the old iconoclast has for musical dramaturgy.

![Sven-Åke Johansson: Feuerlöscher | Bildquelle: Sven-Åke Johansson](https://i0.
wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/aktuell/news-kritik/jazzfest-berlin-2022-110~_h-364_v-img__16__9__xl_w-
648_-be6819cc57a5436fe2e22755fd9495d5c6ac08f6.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1)

Before the concert, Brötzmann was presented with the German Record Critics’ Honorary
Award for his life’s work by the well-known publicist and former Jazz Festival programmer
Bert Noglik. Brötzmann then thanked him warmly and responded to Noglik’s finely 
formulated speech of appreciation in his gently cracking voice: “After all the beautiful
words, now a bit of music.”

Brötzmann’s former companion Alexander von Schlippenbach (84 years old), the conductor
of the legendary Globe Unity Orchestra, which celebrated its world premiere in Berlin
in 1966, was also present at this jazz festival: he was a sideman in the quartet“
The Bridge” of the Portuguese tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado ( with Ingebrit Haker
Flaten on bass and Gerry Hemingsway on drums) at the Quasimodo jazz club. This was
an early highlight of the festival, with electrifying free jazz energy and moments
filled with beautiful, archaic melodies. Alexander von Schlippenbach is now sitting
very hunched over the piano, but with unusual part-writing and chords, which are
still unaffected and skilfully bucking every cliché, he played breathtakingly ingeniously
and highly disciplined at the same time.

Ironically, the project KOMПOUSSULĂ, which was particularly praised by the festival
management, with ten musicians from seven different countries, including Ukraine,
Poland, Turkey and Romania, remained unfinished in the somehow puzzled together.
Singers with fascinating voices sang folk songs from different countries, but the
audience never knew from which country and in which language: because not a single
informative sentence was said about any song.

The fellow musicians on stage didn’t really seem to know the depths of the lyrics
of the individual songs (which would certainly have been the case), because they
chirped and sang very random motifs and phrases. The whole thing dragged on with
little tension and, with superficial colourfulness, was a missed opportunity to 
penetrate into a productive substance.

Great compensation for such moments were offered by concerts such as those by the
saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Isaiah Collier (on different days and places),
two musicians whose enormous presence and creative power promise an exciting future.
And last but not least, the crazy-exciting quartet of cornetist and vocal performer
Ben LaMar Gay – part of the Chicago focus, like drummer Hamid Drake and cellist 
Tomeka Reid – which, among other things, includes an interlude of hand bells waving
in the air for a fascinating aha -Moments worried. Sweeter the bells never swing.
At the Jazzfest Berlin, they heralded another very successful year for artistic 
director Nadin Deventer. Not only the jazz world can look forward to the anniversary
year – the 60th Jazz Festival, which is due in 2023 – but also a curious music world
without blinders and without restrictions.

![Peter Brötzmann beim Jazzfest Berlin 2022 | Bildquelle: Anna Niedermeier / Berliner
Festspiele](https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/aktuell/news-kritik/jazzfest-berlin-
2022-104~_h-364_v-img__16__9__xl_w-648_-be6819cc57a5436fe2e22755fd9495d5c6ac08f6.
jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1)

### _Related_