John Hollenbeck

John Hollenbeck: “The Drum Major Instinct”

(CZ, DE, FR, US)

For much of his career drummer, composer and bandleader John Hollenbeck has been laying waste to the artificial boundaries erected to keep jazz isolated from other serious musical styles. He has achieved these feats through a variety of guises: his multi-dimensional chamber-jazz group Claudia Quintet; his innovative arrangements of pop music for his excellent Large Ensemble; collaborating with composer-singer Meredith Monk; or with his latest project, the groove-driven, absurdist quartet GEORGE, who play Jazzfest Berlin on festival Saturday.
 
To mark the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s legendary opening speech at the 1964 Berliner Festwochen (of which Berliner Jazztage was part), Hollenbeck will enlist a variety of Berlin-based musicians to realise his long-form composition “The Drum Major Instinct”, which is built around recordings of a prophetic King speech. Hollenbeck performed the brass-heavy work, alternating between raucous and solemn, ten years ago while he was living in Berlin, teaching at the Jazz Institut Berlin. The performance to be experienced on this evening invites the audience to occupy the stage itself, as it is presented in three sections, alternating with extended performance footage of legendary concerts of Jazzfest Berlin history.