Roulette is excited to partner with world-renowned Jazz label and producer jazzwerkstatt to present a two-day festival.
On the festival jazzwerkstatt notes, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the direct exchange between the New York and Berlin scenes has largely come to a standstill. With many hurdles, we were nevertheless able to present many New York musicians in our Berlin concert series and the festival in Peitz, including Craig Taborn, Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, Jaimie Branch and many more. The New York Journey now goes in both directions. We are happy to present many of our Berlin musicians in the two-day festival at Roulette. The project sees itself as an invitation to exchange ideas, to get to know each other, and to consolidate existing contacts.
Day one Schedule:
DEREK PLAYS ERIC
The trio DEREK PLAYS ERIC includes stylistic elements of jazz, free improvisation and rock. Three masters of the superbly celebrated musical style change exude an almost anarchistic energy. Like a gigantic acoustic explosion, the unmistakable influences of Derek Bailey, Eric Clapton, John McLaughlin, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Jack Bruce are thrown into the air and recycled many times over. The result is a fascinating sonic brew derived from an experimental playing concept with traces of the jazz tradition.
A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC OF KURT WEILL
THE JAZZWERKSTATT ORCHESTRA
More than 20 years ago, the Wuppertal saxophonist and composer Wolfgang Schmidtke founded the orchestra named after him, which has worked with Markus Stockhausen, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Gerd Dudek, Alexander von Schlippenbach and many others. The 15-piece ensemble never saw itself as a conventional big band striving toward ensemble perfection. From the very beginning, emphasis was placed instead on individual tone development and the improvisational skill of each performer, even or especially in the orchestral format.
In 2018/19, in honor of Thelonious Monk’s 100th birthday, the orchestra performed a Monk program in acclaimed concerts at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, in Lana, Italy, and other places. In 2020, the year of Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker’s 100th birthday, Wolfgang Schmidtke compiled a new program for his orchestra based on Parker’s compositions. His most recent project is dedicated to the German composer Kurt Weill (1900–1950). A contemporary jazz reflection on the 1920s, Berlin’s crazy pulsating years, and on the most influential composer of that time, the creator of the Threepenny Opera. Played by a 15-piece orchestra from the jazzwerkstatt label.
Ulli Blobel is the man behind the label jazzwerkstatt and the concert series of the same name. With well over 250 CDs, the label jazzwerkstatt shapes the image of so-called jazz in the capital. The Berlin label was named after the legendary festival, the Jazzwerkstatt Peitz, which is one of the oldest jazz festivals in Germany and from 1973 became a mecca of free jazz and
improvised music.
