The 11th Young Munich Jazz Prize in the Unterfahrt – Munich

The jury had already done the biggest chunk of work when the 11th Young Munich Jazz Prize was played in the Unterfahrt on Friday. This time she had previously filtered out the three participating bands from 35 applicants using the blindfold process. Proof of how well established the competition is nationwide. Unlike in previous years, no local formation was represented in the final this year; the aspirants came from Cologne, Berlin and Mannheim – quite representative of the German jazz scene.

It was also representative that all the bands only played their own compositions. And the evening reflected another trend: two of the ensembles were led by a drummer, one by an electric bassist – the instruments “with which the most has happened in the recent past,” as the jury member and speaker said Ralf Dombrowski said. In the end, two of the four prizes – because in addition to the placements, there has also been a soloist prize offered by Andreas Schiller’s Jazz Foundation Munich for some time – went to Berlin. The Quintet no mans land The drummer Matthias Meyer won, and his alto saxophonist Efim Braylovskiy received the award as best soloist.

Quite rightly so, because the “Berliner Brett” (Dombrowski) presented themselves as the most dynamic and mature group. All five musicians demonstrated their top class in the solos and in the interplay. Matthias Mayer, who is studying at the Berlin Jazz Institute and is currently studying in New York thanks to a scholarship, had composed very different pieces for her, but they still had a signature style. Perhaps most impressively, “Holy E”, a homage to Duke Ellington, gave the horns the typical blues-induced, sensual lines a la Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster, while the rhythm section moved away in a very modern way.

If there had been a composition prize, it could still have been given to Micha Jesske. The Mannheim Sextet Smuk The young drummer was perhaps not quite as advanced in terms of playing technique and soloing no mans land, but Jesske writes magical pieces for this line-up (“Harry Potter” was the name of the first number), sometimes mysteriously shimmering, sometimes surging in triplets, always dense and splendidly arranged with the melodic guidance of wind instruments and guitar. With the melancholic “Garden House” (created in one during the pandemic) you could imagine how Elvis Costello would sing it – that would be a hit.

Ursula Wienkens performed with singing, that of Merle Böwering Quintet Summit at. However, it was precisely here that it became apparent that the need for optimization was greatest for this group. In three out of four pieces her voice was used instrumentally, unfortunately in the same unison vocalizations. The only song was simply written too high for Böwering’s situation. The fact that the compositions had quite different characters, sometimes with hints of Wayne Shorter, sometimes with Brazilian elements, was leveled out, among other things, by the fact that the solos on the Fender Rhodes sounded similar. Wienken, the current bassist of the Federal Jazz Orchestra BuJazzo, So there is still work to do, excellent approaches were clearly visible.

Of course, one can fundamentally argue about the sense and fairness of competitions in music and especially in jazz. The Young Munich Music Prize proved once again that, at least in the young talent sector, there is hardly a better way to create attention for unknown artists (the Unterfahrt was sold out), to create unrivaled, varied concert evenings and, last but not least, to distribute a little money to poor young jazz musicians.

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