In hardly any other major city are there as few performance opportunities for local jazz musicians as in Munich. This makes this event, which is being held for the 34th time, all the more significant Jazz festival of the Jazz Musicians Initiative (JIM) Munich as the only festival platform for its own scene for a long time. It is all the more shameful how long the club had to fight for funding and space and is still having to fight. A dozen venues have accumulated over time, and last year the Sudendeutsche Haus and the Blitz Club were added.
Because lightning really struck in the latter, this year we’re going to the chic club in the Deutsches Museum for two days on Friday and Sunday. And on the other two days you return to an original location: the black box of the old Gasteig, now under the aegis of the interim operator Fatcat. The fact that the venues are younger and hipper is also reflected in the program, which again includes three concerts per day.
Maybe not really on the first day. Guitarist Barbara Jungfer, who has been living in Munich since 2007 and who initially deals with folk songs in her own way, has been part of the inventory of German jazz for almost as long as the Jazz Festival has existed. The pianist Masako Ohta, who oscillates between classical and jazz, and the trumpeter Matthias Lindermayr have also been established for a long time, even though their duo includes their debut album “Mmmmh….” is quite new. At least it’s a band debut Groove Galaxy, even though old hands have also teamed up here with Oliver Hahn, Michael Vochezer, Patrick Scales and Arno Haselsteiner. With the jazz rock tradition of the 1970s and 1980s as the direction of play and thrust.
The next day begins with the brand new young “Sound Collective” Full bloom. Alexis Boetcher, Miko Watanabe, Sascha Lüer, Robin Jermer and Tilmann Brandl rave about their album debut “Time Zones”, released on the Zenker brothers’ internationally popular techno label “Ilian Tape”, in a very clubby manner in all sorts of jazzy realms from psychedelic to fusion to two-step out of. It’s fresh too Electric shock! with Michael Hornek (formerly passport)Mario Schönhofer (streams) and Gerwin Eisenhauer (Trio Eleven) get danceable fusion going in the new trio of the same name.
In between, you can welcome special guests from abroad – this also has a long tradition at the Jazzfest with label days and other things: The Ochepovsky Project is a discovery from the Czech jazz scene by the Jazzfest creators Andy Lutter and Sunk Pöschl. The Russian-born guitarist Igor Ochepovsky leads a collective into alternative music spheres. Exciting.
“Mostly Monk” is the motto the next day for the star trio Geoff Goodman, Matthieu Bordenave and Rudi Mahall, before vibraphonist Tim Collins gets started in the trio with groove masters Matthias Bublath and Christian Lettner. In between, the Moscow-born Munich native talks about a “lost homeland” to piano improvisations. The big finale is on Sunday with the promoted brothers Racer and Marcio Tubinos Artet. But the highlight will probably be the appearance of Mario Schönhofer with the electronics engineer and The fantastic Four-Co-founder Andreas Rieke aka AND.Ypsilon. Among other things, an original mini-Moog from the German Museum is being used, which otherwise says: touching is forbidden!
34th Jazz Festival Munich, Thursday to Sunday, November 2nd to 5th, Fatcat (old Gasteig), Rosenheimer Str. 5, and Blitz Club, in the Deutsches Museum, Ludwigsbrücke, www.jazzfestmuenchen.de