Jazz & Pop Festival

05 & 06 Feb 2025

PROGRAM
05 Feb 205, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Philipp Gropper, Saxophone & Vincent Meissner, Piano
06 Feb 2025, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Lisa Bassenge & Flo Dauner
Prof. Rainer Tempel Artistic Festival Direction

Philipp Gropper, Saxophone
Philipp Gropper (*1978) plays a significant role in Berlin's jazz avant-garde, which has an impact far beyond the city. His most important ensemble is his own: PHILM (with Elias Stemeseder, Robert Landfermann, Leif Berger). Gropper is culturally engaged and says about his art: Pure virtuosity, pure intellectual flights and conformity do not speak to me, I seek directness and aura.

Vincent Meissner, Piano
Vincent Meissner (*2000) is the youngest guest of these Jazz Days so far, although he has essentially left the phase of being a young talent behind. He comes from Saxony, lives in Dresden, and mainly works in a trio. This working band represents jazz in a traditional lineup with surprising twists - with a decidedly tactile-playful piano part and compositional approach.

Lisa Bassenge
The singer and songwriter from Berlin (born there!) is one of the defining voices in the genre in Germany. She has achieved this not only with her own band but also by participating in projects like Micatone. She carefully shapes not only jazz singing but also her songs, from lyrics and music to arrangements, production, and sound aesthetics. This care radiates depth and makes it unmistakable. So, no rush. It will be especially interesting to see what happens when things have to move quickly.

Flo Dauner
This visit was long overdue. A child of the city of Stuttgart, living in Stuttgart. Of course, the son of Wolfgang Dauner (whose music is also performed here) but also an exceptional drummer independent of him, a key figure in the German music scene. He was so involved in practical experience early on that two semesters at Berklee College Boston settled the issue of music school. Now, there is finally a short visit to the HMDK.

31.01. & 01.02.2024

PROGRAM
WED, 31.01.2024, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Rebecca Trescher & Veronika Morscher
THU, 01.02.2024, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Lisa Wulff & Oli Rubow
Prof. Rainer Tempel Artistic Festival Director

For the ninth time, the Jazz & Pop Festival of HMDK is taking place - and at the same time celebrating its tenth anniversary! Isn't that magical? As always, external guests collaborate with students from the Institute of Jazz & Pop over three days to create a concert program and perform it together. The first day starts with composer and clarinetist Rebecca Trescher, who has made a name for herself in recent years, especially with her unusual tentet. She studied with Steffen Schorn in Nuremberg, is a recipient of the German Jazz Award, won the newcomer category of Down Beat magazine, and was a scholarship holder at the Cité des Arts. As a native of Tübingen, she hails from our region. The program will feature current music from her tentet. Also on Wednesday, we will hear singer and composer Veronika Morscher, who comes from Bregenz in Vorarlberg and studied in Boston, Vienna, and Cologne. She performs as an artist with her music in a quartet as well as solo at the piano. She is also one of the creative forces behind the Cologne vocal quartet Of Cabbages And Kings. She will present various music from her projects here, always with the song as the outer form. On Thursday, we welcome bassist Lisa Wulff from Hamburg. Her quartet, for which she composes contemporary modern jazz, is at the center of her work. She will bring music from her current album, but will also integrate other instruments. Lisa Wulff has often played with the NDR Bigband and was awarded the German Jazz Prize in the bass category in 2023. Sometimes she sings too. And plays - attention paradox - a soprano(!)-bass. That certainly piques curiosity.
Finally, we have the well-known drummer Oli Rubow from the south joining us. He plays with Fola Dada in Hattler and with Kössler/Bodenseh in Netzer, but has been living in Frankfurt for a long time. There, he teaches at the university of music and engages in arts like the electronic salon. The music with us will also have a significant electronic component. Oli, according to his own words, would like to be reincarnated as a metronome. And on top of that, he writes books!

January 1st & 2nd, 2023

PROGRAM
WED, January 1st, 2023, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Jonas Westergaard & Rebekka Salomea Ziegler
THU, January 2nd, 2023, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Elisabeth Coudoux & Günter Baby Sommer
Prof. Christian Weidner Artistic Festival Direction

The 8th edition of the Jazz & Pop Festival is approaching!
As every year, four outstanding national and international artists will come to our premises and take our students into their musical worlds. Our guests will rehearse, perform, and concert together with the students on the two festival evenings. An absolute highlight of the academic year at the HMDK Concert Hall!
Jonas Westergaard (double bass)
Danish double bassist Jonas Westergaard, based in Berlin, is an international figure of the creative avant-garde. His work is diverse: He plays with Django Bates, founded the Singer-Songwriter collective "Eggs Laid by Tigers," and writes music for his trio with Sören Kjærgaard and Peter Bruun. He is also part of the formation DLW (Dell Lillinger Westergaard), which skillfully subverts genre boundaries between jazz and contemporary music. Their latest album "Beats" is on the Longlist of the German Record Critics' Award. With them, Jonas Westergaard was nominated for the German Jazz Award in 2021 in the category "Band of the Year." Westergaard's playing and music are imbued with soulful melody, sound of departure and curiosity, and explore thoughtfully origins and new paths.
Rebekka Salomea Ziegler (vocals)
Singer Rebekka Salomea Ziegler, based in Cologne, grew up in a German-American musical family in Baden-Württemberg, studied jazz in Cologne and Copenhagen, played in the Bujazzo, founded the vocal quartet "Of Cabbages and Kings," and was also nominated for the German Jazz Award in 2021. Since 2014, she has been in high demand with her band Salomea. With their unmistakably unique, mind-boggling music, between R'n'B, Experimental-HipHop, and jazz, they come to our festival. The band describes their music as "Contemporary Multi-Genre" and writes: "Salomea's Sound is a fluid and flexible art form. It's a statement, a protest. It's an invitation. Sincerely. To counter expectations and prejudices. To stop a moment and listen."
Elisabeth Coudoux (cello)
Elisabeth Coudoux is a cellist at the interface of different musical genres: free improvisation, experimental music, New composed music, and jazz. Following a classical education, she pursued jazz studies in Cologne with Frank Gratkowski and Prof. Dieter Manderscheid. In addition to her own projects (e.g., Emißatett, for which she composes), she is a cellist in many ensembles and collaborates in interdisciplinary projects with dancers, visual artists, and writers. She is a founding member of IMPAKT, a collective for free improvisation in Cologne. And while people and their music are of course more important than the following information, it is still worth mentioning, as is commonly done in such texts, as it may attract some visitors: Elisabeth Coudoux was highly deservedly nominated in the last year 2021 for the German Jazz Award.
Günter Baby Sommer (drums)
When someone shapes jazz history over so many decades, mentioning awards becomes unnecessary. Günter Baby Sommer is one of the most significant representatives of contemporary European jazz, who, with a highly individualized set of drums, has developed a distinctive musical language. Sommer was born in Dresden in 1943 and studied at the University of Music, "Carl Maria von Weber." His musical contributions to the most important jazz groups in the GDR, such as the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowsky Trio, the Central Quartet, and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band, enabled Sommer to enter the international scene. Thus, Sommer collaborated not only in a trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Peter Kowald but also met important players such as Peter Brötzmann, Fred van Hove, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker, and Cecil Taylor. Sommer's solo playing sensitized him for collaborations with writers such as Günter Grass. Sommer's discography comprises over 100 published audio recordings. As a professor at the University of Music in Dresden, he influences the professional mediation of contemporary jazz to the next generations.

02. & 03.02.2022

PROGRAM
WED, 02.02.2022, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Achim Kaufmann · Jim Black
Students of the HMDK Stuttgart
THU, 03.02.2022, 7:00 pm, Concert Hall
Sebastian Gille · Kalle Kalima
Students of the HMDK Stuttgart
Prof. Rainer Tempel Artistic Festival Direction

At the end of the winter semester, our university will once again become an international jazz meeting point as part of the already seventh edition of our festival. Learning and performing go hand in hand, as all guests work and practice with the students of the Jazz Institute - and ultimately perform with them.
Achim Kaufmann is an artist personality full of calm and deliberation. In numerous top-notch ensembles, Kaufmann has showcased his improvisational artistry. Contrary to what his name might suggest, his interest has always been focused on the music itself. Hailing from Aachen, the pianist born in 1962 has lived in Berlin for several years after studying in Cologne and Amsterdam. His place of residence is secondary, as he is well-known throughout the European avant-garde. Achim Kaufmann is a professor of jazz piano in Weimar. He is the recipient of the most important German jazz awards: the SWR Jazz Award and the Albert Mangelsdorff Prize.
Drummer Jim Black hails from Seattle and moved to Boston to attend Berklee College at the age of 18, where he met fellow students such as Chris Speed, Andrew D'Angelo, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, as well as European musicians like Frank Möbus. In 1991, he moved to Brooklyn and spent several decades touring the world solo. Only recently has he settled in Berlin. Primarily recognized as a free player, Black brings a rare punch due to his rock 'n' roll roots from his youth. As a bandleader, he stood out with his vocalist-less (!) singer-songwriter band AlasNoAxis, and more recently with his trio (featuring Elias Stemeseder and Thomas Morgan). Due to the excitement, the author cannot resist a silly statement in the style of a drummer magazine: Jim Black is probably the best drummer in the world. Certainly.
Saxophonist Sebastian Gille, also a recipient of the SWR Jazz Award, hails from Quedlinburg and now resides in Cologne after studying in Hamburg. There, he is part of the creative avant-garde and collaborates with musicians such as Robert Landfermann, Jonas Burgwinkel, or Fabian Arends. Gille is a unique talent with great energy and remarkable charisma. He is serious yet humorous, mischievous but never musically silly. Above all, he is very contagious, as we experienced during his brief visit last autumn. Therefore, it was essential to have him with us again.
Kalle Kalima is a Finnish guitarist who has been living and working in Berlin for several years, collaborating with artists like Oli Steidle, Greg Cohen, or Max Andrezejewski. He has also been extensively involved in composition. He is interested in free jazz as well as underground pop, and the influence of new music is evident. In Lucerne, Kalle Kalima is a professor of jazz guitar. He also accompanies the singer/performer Jelena Kuljic and Andreas Schaerer.

29th & 30th January 2020

PROGRAM

WED, 29th January 2020, 7:00 PM, CONCERT HALL
Jochen Rückert · Henning Sieverts
Students of the HMDK Stuttgart
THU, 30th January 2020, 7:00 PM, CONCERT HALL
Nik Bärtsch · Lucia Cadotsch & Wanja Slavin
Students of the HMDK Stuttgart
Prof. Rainer Tempel Artistic Festival Direction

Day 1 of the 6th Jazz & Pop Festival of the HMDK features Henning Sieverts, a bassist who has been active as a sideman and band leader for many years. Sieverts, born in Berlin, has been living in Munich for a long time, where he also works as a composer throughout Germany. Sieverts has embarked on countless tours and has always performed with the best musicians at the highest level. Additionally, the trained journalist also works for the jazz program of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation. Sieverts initially learned to play the cello, which he still nurtures alongside his bass playing.
In Stuttgart, Sieverts will perform compositions from his projects "Symmetry" and "Symmethree". As the name suggests, all works revolve in various ways around the theme of symmetry in music.
Hailing from Cologne, the second guest of the evening, drummer Jochen Rückert, has been living in New York for almost 25 years, where he moved as a 20-year-old. After just one semester of studies in Germany, he decided to continue learning directly in practice, and what better place than New York. Rückert has also been active as the bandleader of his quartet (with Mark Turner, Matt Penman, Lage Lund), and the music of this band will be the focus of the program in Stuttgart. Rückert's extensive touring life is uniquely documented in a digital book series called "Read The Rueckert" in an idiosyncratic autobiographical manner. Under the pseudonym "Wolff Parkinson White", Rückert also produces electronic music.
On the 2nd day of this year's festival, we first welcome the Zurich-based pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch. Through his central project "Ronin", he has gained international attention and for many years has been releasing his music described as ritualistic on the ECM label. Rooted in jazz, Bärtsch also studied classical piano in Zurich, later also philosophy and linguistics. He experiments with various performative concert formats and dives into all relevant areas of music for him. As a curator of events, part-owner of a club, and head of his own label, he was influenced by ethnic music styles from around the world in his music.
Closing the 6th Jazz & Pop Festival will be the Swiss-born, Berlin-based singer Lucia Cadotsch, accompanied by one of her key musical partners, saxophonist Wanja Slavin. Lucia Cadotsch studied jazz singing in Berlin but ventures far into the field of experimental music as well as avant-garde pop music. Her current project "Liun + The Science Fiction Band" already hints at its experimental nature in the title - and the music from this production will also be heard in Stuttgart. Involved in this project is saxophonist Wanja Slavin, born in Freiburg, who has been an important part of both the Berlin and Cologne scenes, including the KLAENG Festival, for several years. This generation, now roughly between 35 and 40 years old, has not only brought a new culture of playing, interaction, and networking to the German jazz scene, but most importantly, what used to be the realm of individual fighters: an artistic perspective.

January 30 & 31, 2019

PROGRAM

WED, 30.01.2019, 8:00 PM, CONCERT HALL
Christian Lillinger · Ed Partyka
Students of HMDK Stuttgart
THU, 31.01.2019, 8:00 PM, CONCERT HALL
Kit Downes · Pegelia Gold
Students of HMDK Stuttgart
Prof. Rainer Tempel Artistic Festival Direction

At the end of the winter semester, the Jazz & Pop Institute welcomes four remarkable artists who, within three days, will develop a program with our students and eventually perform on the stage of the concert hall.
Hailing from Lübben and currently based in Berlin, Christian Lillinger is arguably the most attention-grabbing drummer in Germany, recently awarded the prestigious SWR Jazz Prize. Lillinger is a proponent of contemporary avant-garde and pursues his musical path with remarkable consistency. In projects like Hyperactive Kid and Grund, he serves as a bandleader, and his role as a sideman (if one can even call it that) is impressive, extending to collaborations with older generations such as Rolf Kühn and Alexander von Schlippenbach.
Ed Partyka hails from Chicago but has been living in Europe for several decades, initially drawn to Cologne because of Jiggs Whigham and Bob Brookmeyer. Brookmeyer, whom Partyka considers as a role model, friend, and mentor, transformed the bass trombonist Partyka into the composer Partyka. His orchestra, the Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra, operates as a free band with impressive consistency, regularly releasing new albums. Partyka's music is powerful, dense, and captivating in the best sense, demanding and engaging. Furthermore, Partyka is an unusually proficient conductor and bandleader who challenges but also supports his musicians. This competence has made him one of the most sought-after bandleaders in Europe and beyond. In Graz, Partyka directs the Jazz Institute at the University of Arts.
Born in Norwich, pianist and organist Kit Downes studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and has been based in the British capital since then. In 2016, he recorded a CD on three different organs in England for the renowned label ECM. Since the grand organ in the concert hall had only been a part of the stage set at our festival until then, the invitation to Kit Downes was a natural choice. A new sound world will unfold for both the audience and performers. A must-see for organ enthusiasts.
Pegelia Gold is known for interpreting contemporary music and Baroque music adaptations, as well as for her compositions bridging avant-garde and pop. Before her career on stage, Gold lived as a vagabond, street musician, and sculptor, hitchhiking through various European countries. In 2004, she pursued a music degree at the University of Music in Würzburg. Gold's song compositions evoke late Romantic art songs in a contemporary form. Her song material is enriched by a keen sense for unique instrumentation, which is sure to be further refined during her work at our university.

January 31st & February 1st

PROGRAM
January 31st, 2018, 8 pm | Concert Hall 
Matthias Schriefl & Lauren Newton
February 1st, 2018, 8 pm | Concert Hall 
Niels Klein & Ron Spielman

In its fourth year, our festival follows the proven principle of presenting four guests in double concerts over two evenings. All artists work for three days with our students and finally perform with them on stage. The audience will once again experience the full diversity of the jazz and pop world in 2018.
Matthias Schriefl (*1981) hails from Kempten in the Allgäu region and travels the world from there with his unusual ensembles. Schriefl often references his homeland and cultivates Alpine jazz by incorporating Alpine instruments or local vocal traditions. His performances reflect this as well, with unconventional attire and atypical venues being an integral part of his art. Schriefl studied jazz trumpet in Cologne and works as a composer and multi-instrumentalist.
Lauren Newton is the Grande Dame of experimental jazz vocals in Europe and beyond – and happily resides not far away in Tübingen. She has been a guest at the HMDK Stuttgart on several occasions, but has never performed at the Institute for Jazz & Pop, a situation we can now finally rectify. Before the establishment of the jazz department, she also studied in Stuttgart. Newton was a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra, and her list of collaborators reads like a Who's Who of European jazz over the last 40 years. Additionally, she has lent her unique vocal art to music theater, visual arts, and radio. As a professor, she teaches at the Lucerne School of Music.
Niels Klein (*1978) is responsible for directing the Large Ensemble this year, which will perform his current program "loom". Trained as a saxophonist, Klein has been a professor in Cologne since 2016, as well as the director of BuJazzO and a sought-after guest conductor and arranger for the big bands of NDR, hr, and WDR. Klein is part of the exceptional generation of young musicians in Cologne whose work significantly influences the upcoming talent in the country, including ours. His innovative project "tubes & wires" demonstrates that he has much to contribute beyond the orchestral realm.
Finally, we continue our series of musically exceptional and instrumentally gifted singer-songwriters with Ron Spielman. Hailing from Schweinfurt in Franconia, the "Liverpool of Germany" as he calls it, Spielman has been a bandleader, singer, and guitarist for 30 years. Based in Berlin since 1999, he continuously performs in clubs there, but has also toured extensively with his bands throughout Germany. His music, deeply rooted in blues and rock'n'roll, ranges from glamorous with a large horn section to intimate focused solely on songwriting. Spielman will likely perform with a small ensemble, delivering predominantly tranquil music.

February 01 & 02

PROGRAM

01.02.2017
Bert Joris and the Big Band of the HMDK Stuttgart
& Micha Acher
02.02.2017
Bastian Stein plays "Birth Of The Cool" & Peter Brötzmann

Bert Joris and the Big Band of the HMDK Stuttgart | The Belgian jazz composer and trumpeter (born in 1957) is a grandeur of the European scene and a highly respected artist for his consistency and depth. Naturally, he has worked with all the reputable jazz orchestras on the continent, with the "Brussels Jazz Orchestra" being his central ensemble in recent years. The program will feature newer works from these productions.
Micha Acher | Hailing from the remarkable Bavarian town of Weilheim, Micha Acher's artistic activities cannot be summed up in a sentence. From a combo formed during his school years, the "Tied & Tickled Trio" emerged, where Acher played numerous instruments. Around the Bavarian record label "Hausmusik" a creative independent scene was formed, with the recordings of the band "the notwist" being its most famous productions. Together with his brother Markus, Micha Acher founded "the notwist" in the late 1980s. Weilheim and its associated scene have become a symbol of persistence and independence, even if the protagonists may not perceive it that way.
Bastian Stein plays "Birth Of The Cool" | Following the performance of Gil Evans' adaptation of "Porgy & Bess" at the festival premiere in 2015, the audience and participants expressed the desire to explore other rarely performed works. Now, with Bastian Stein joining the Jazz Institute faculty this semester, there is another opportunity. Only with an outstanding soloist like Bastian Stein can a program like "Birth Of The Cool" be performed meaningfully. Recorded in 1949 and arranged by Evans, Carisi, Mulligan, and John Lewis, this music marks the beginning of the practical collaboration between the two pioneers Gil Evans and Miles Davis.
Peter Brötzmann | It is a special honor to welcome Peter Brötzmann, the saxophonist born in 1941 from Wuppertal. Free improvisation is closely associated with his name in Germany, yet it is only a starting point when approaching this charismatic artist who rarely speaks on stage. Peter Brötzmann is simply an experience; a master of the highest caliber.
The festival's sponsorship was once again taken over by the Foundation for Art and Culture of the Sparda-Bank Baden-Württemberg.
A big thank you!

February 03 & 04, 2016

PROGRAM

03.02.2016
Pablo Held for 4 Hands: Pablo Held and the piano class of HMDK Stuttgart
Christof Lauer plays Sidney Bechet
Big Band of MH Stuttgart with Christof Lauer

04.02.2016
The Red Zone: Frank Möbus and students of HMDK Stuttgart
The Cabinet: Tim Neuhaus and students of HMDK Stuttgart

Review
How time flies: Just as our festival was launched, the second edition is already behind us! We encountered four fundamentally different music concepts, all characterized by the high artistic level - which is the standard for our Jazz Days. The format and idea of this event have become well known. Following is a review that focuses less on the concert experience for the audience and more on the experiences of the participating students.
Pablo Held opened the program with a focus on the piano, mainly played on two grand pianos. A rare event in the jazz world, perhaps due to the instrument situation of a music genre that tends to be more at home in small cellar venues than in big concert halls. Pablo Held skillfully inspired his four duet partners and elegantly navigated around the tradition of piano battles. Unlike wind players, jazz pianists rarely, if ever, share the stage. This experience was as impressive for the participants as the methodical clarity and seriousness of the almost 30-year-old Pablo Held, who almost never allows jazz improvisation without ears (meaning, only from the fingers). Although Held uses terms dominant in jazz piano like voicing, scales, and patterns in teaching, he always puts listening skills first. He surprised our pianists by spontaneously having them improvise to recordings of impressionistic music they were unfamiliar with.
A man of few words but an acute listener, Christof Lauer is. Even the rehearsal proved that Lauer doesn't need to do much more than play: his impressive sound combined with his playful energy unequivocally explains his understanding of making music. In a discussion session with our saxophone class, the 62-year-old dropped a remarkable sentence: "In my whole life, maybe I transcribed three solos, otherwise I just worked on my thing." Two weeks after encountering Branford Marsalis ("listen to and steal from the greats"), we have now encountered the full spectrum of learning approaches in a short time. In the concert with the Big Band, it was evident that even one player like Lauer can lead an orchestra without a gesture or word.
Frank Möbus is an almost legendary jazz educator (in Nuremberg, Weimar, Berlin, Lucerne), who as a guitarist and leader of the band "The Red Zone," shaped entire generations, including the author of these lines. It was interesting to see how Möbus works rigorously, demands his music, explains it repeatedly, stops and restarts, tackling pieces always at the edge of the technical feasibility limit, in an ensemble we "prescribed" for him. But then to make music with these young people as if he himself had put the band together, as if our students were his new dream line-up. An ideal scenario for the festival: learning without appearing like a lecture, which is far from self-evident given the tour de force this program entails.
Tim Neuhaus, on the other hand, was faced for the first time with the situation where his songs were played or initially covered by students. However, a band whose lineup differs from the original in many ways inevitably has to make changes. It was intriguing to see how Neuhaus dealt with this, knowing that in sophisticated pop music, not a millisecond of a production is left unconsidered. Tim Neuhaus, however, offers more than many successful pop acts - flexibility and spontaneity (perhaps because he studied jazz drums!). He listened, integrated, and reconstructed things, all with the same care and patience reflective of the pop melting pot - not our first experience in this regard. Finally, a short
Thanks to Prof. Patrick Thomas (State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart) for the poster competition, to colleagues Volker Engelberth, Sandi Kuhn, and Christian Weidner for their artistic contributions, to all the driving forces at the institution for the implementation, and of course to the Sparda-Bank Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation for their financial support!

February 12 & 13, 2015

PROGRAM

February 12, 2015
ROOT 70 & STRINGS WITH NILS WOGRAM
BIG BAND OF THE HMDK STUTTGART & CLAUS STÖTTER
PERFORMING PORGY & BESS (Miles Davis/Gil Evans)
February 13, 2015
THE MUSIC OF KOSHO WITH MICHAEL "KOSHO" KOSCHORREK
SWR BIG BAND PLAYS THE MUSIC OF THE UNIVERSITY

At the end of the winter semester 2014/15, a compact Jazz & Pop Festival with workshops took place at our university for the first time. On two evenings, there were small band and big band concerts, with programs prepared throughout the semester and elaborated on during two-day workshops with guests. The focus was always on student participation and their encounter with musical greats of the scene.
Nils Wogram is perhaps the most significant European trombonist of his generation, as well as a composer and bandleader who has set new standards. With ensembles like Root 70 established over years, he has achieved musical quality that is unparalleled and can open new doors from this consistency. The program Root 70 & Strings is surely one of the most unusual but also most consistent ways to experience strings in a jazz context – and then appears as the only possible way to listen.
Porgy & Bess is one of the three important orchestral projects of Miles Davis and Gil Evans, and in its song sequence, it is perhaps the most coherent. Describing the strong influence Davis and Evans had on orchestral jazz would exceed the scope here. It features a different Gershwin with an orchestra that is much more than a big band. With Claus Stötter, a long-time teacher at our university, soloist of the NDR Big Band, and ardent Davis admirer, we heard a great soloist there.
Michael "Kosho" Koschorrek is an exceptional guitarist and songwriter, as his playing, songwriting, and arranging skills are revered in musical circles of many genres. He is, of course, the guitarist of the Söhne Mannheims, and Joo Kraus and Wolfgang Haffner are also counted among his musical companions. He has shaped over 100 albums as a producer, guitarist, and singer. At the festival, Kosho and his songs were at the center, namely on stage with our students.
The SWR Big Band has existed since 1951, and its first leader, Erwin Lehn, was also incidentally the first leader of the big band of our university. This first-class orchestra has been collaborating with our Jazz & Pop Institute for some time and once again premiered compositions and arrangements of our students on that evening.
An interesting collaboration was also part of the festival program:
As part of a design competition, students of the Academy of Fine Arts presented poster designs for the festival. These were displayed for viewing outside the concert hall, and attendees voted on which design would eventually become the festival poster. Design professor Patrick Thomas graciously agreed to carry out this idea with his class.