# The Jazzest Berlin 2022։ How does jazz transform itself when it is transported into another world of sound by a string quartet? Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/11/25/the-jazzest-berlin-2022%d6%89-how-does-jazz-transform-itself-when-it-is-transported-into-another-world-of-sound-by-a-string-quartet-video-photos/
- Published: 2022-11-25T00:02:10+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**The Jazzest Berlin is open. At the start on Thursday evening there was a string
quartet, an extraordinary drummer and a complex sound collage.**

At the opening concert of the 59th edition of the Jazzfest Berlin in the newly renovated
building of the Berliner Festspiele, the focus of attention is on the motherland
of jazz this Thursday evening at the start of the festival: the ensembles come from
Chicago and New York and can be experienced here in three very different concerts
one after the other are.

The jazz classic by Charles Mingus really gets the string quartet from Chicago moving:“
Better Git It in Your Soul”, this request is aimed at saxophones and trombones in
Mingus’ original, here two violins take turns in the solo.

How does jazz transform itself when it is transported into another world of sound
by a string quartet? The cellist Tomeka Reid answers this question quite impressively
with her Hemphill Stringtet. With charming grooves, rousing solos, but – because
it’s a string quartet – of course without drums.

But then in the second concert it has a really big performance. Hamid Drake, also
from Chicago, is one of the world’s most imaginative jazz drummers. In the first
half of the concert, he uses his drum set in every imaginable direction, puts a 
woolen blanket over the drums, creating mysteriously muted sounds in this way, then
tears off the material and lets the skins sound with full force again – a drumming
that you can doesn’t see every day.

The beginning is as virtuoso as the continuation is spiritual, when the drummer 
leaves his set and steps forward with only a simple frame drum in his arm.

![Hamid Drake - DRUMMERWORLD](https://i0.wp.com/www.drummerworld.com/drummerworld/
hamiddrake840.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

Drake now creates hypnotic grooves with his bare hands while singing ancient Indian
words from Sanskrit. Inspired by Alice Coltrane, the pianist and singer who Drake
met when he was young. Her spiritual approach to jazz, Hamid Drake tells the audience,
shaped him in the early 1970s and is still his inspiration today.

Coltrane’s compositions such as “Turiya and Ramakrishna” are among the most-heard
pieces of spiritual jazz – with which the musician and wife of saxophonist John 
Coltrane, who died in 2007, actually deserved much greater fame.

Studio shoot for the documentary series “Offline” with the Ukrainian and Russian
models Valeriia Karamann (left), Tanya Chudnovskaia (2nd from left) Daniel Nikiforow(
top right) and director and photographer Mehran Djojan (bottom right) (Source: ARD
Kultur/Überan djojan)

Spiritual jazz is one of the focal points at this year’s jazz festival. Another 
will examine the influence of folk on jazz in various concerts. However, the New
York avant-garde artist Craig Taborn moves as far as possible away from folklore
tendencies on this varied evening.

The complex sound collage, which is performed here with piano, viola, double bass
and drum set, supplemented by numerous live electronic devices, bears the title “
Incept Method”. A term from higher mathematics, which has always played a role in
music.

If you still haven’t had enough of jazz after four hours and three concerts on the
main stage, you can still experience Lumpek on the stage of the Kassenhalle on this
first evening, a French-Polish formation that combines free jazz with folklore in
an enchanting way.

The second day will then continue happily with “Free Jazz and Gnawa-Grooves”, a 
concert with Peter Brötzman, Hamid Drake and Majid Bekkas, starting at 19:30, followed
by a performance by artist Sven-Åke Johansson by the contemporary jazz piano trio
of Estonian Kirke Karja.

![Brian Marsella, Pianist im Haus der Berliner Festspiele beim Soundcheck, beim 
Jazzfest Berlin 2019 (Bild: dpa/Brian Marsella, Pianist im Haus der Berliner Festspiele
beim Soundcheck, beim Jazzfest Berlin 2019 (Bild: dpa/POP-EYE/HEINRICH)](https://
i0.wp.com/www.rbb24.de/content/dam/rbb/rbb/rbb24/2022/2022_11/dpa/jazz-126487515.
jpg.jpg/size%3D708x398.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1)

### _Related_