Closing of Jazzfest Berlin: 60 Years of Past, Present and Future Celebrated with Music
Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band
© Berliner Festspiele, Foto/photo: Fabian Schellhorn
In total, over 9,000 people between the ages of 6 and 85 attended the concerts, jam sessions and free events organized by the Research Lab and Community Lab Moabit and celebrated 60 years of Jazzfest Berlin together with over 140 international musicians. 6,370 tickets were sold for the 24 concerts at Haus der Berliner Festspiele, A-Trane, Quasimodo and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. In addition, the free admission offers in the supporting programme reached 300 more people and the jam sessions in Quasimodo 600. The numerous artistic interventions and encounter formats of the Community Lab Moabit attracted over 1,400 interested people in addition to the 350 participants. The three live broadcasts by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ARD and radio3 from rbb as well as the ARD Jazznacht carried the music beyond the venues and into the world. The radio broadcasts and the lectures of the Research Lab are also available in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library.
Yesterday, 3 November, the concert programme of the 60th anniversary edition of Jazzfest Berlin came to an end with performances by Darius Jones, Sylvie Courvoisier, Otomo Yoshihide, Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins as well as the band Oùat. 6,370 visitors attended the 24 concerts at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, A-Trane, Quasimodo and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. In addition, the free offerings in the supporting programme with the screening of films from the ARD archives and content from the Jazzfest Research Lab reached at least another 300 visitors. The revived jam sessions at Quasimodo brought another 600 music enthusiasts to the festival.
The final “Community Sunday” event of the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit was also very popular and attracted around 800 people at the three venues Jazzinstitut Berlin, OTTO-Platz and Refo Moabit alone. The workshops, musical interventions and other encounter formats that took place from 28 October brought improvised music to the Moabit district, in cooperation with 38 local initiatives and supported by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. In addition to the 350 active participants – from primary school children to educators and musicians – more than 600 people of all ages and backgrounds took part in this extraordinary project.
Other highlights of this year's 60th anniversary concert programme were the opening evening with jazz legend Joe McPhee, who performed at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele with the trio Decoy, consisting of drummer Steve Noble, bassist John Edwards and pianist Alexander Hawkins, and the concert by saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, who shook the stage at Quasimodo late into the evening. The US pianist Marilyn Crispell gave a rare solo concert on the first night, before performing together with saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Carmen Castaldi in the Trio Tapestry the following evening. The third day was characterized by the moving performance of the 80-year-old Joachim Kühn with his new French Trio on the Main Stage as well as the sound journey of the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, which first appeared at the festival in 1970 and now thrilled audiences again with its collective experiments in a new line-up. On the final evening, the premieres of the latest projects by saxophonist Darius Jones and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier captivated the audience and the magnificent performance by Otomo Yoshihide's Special Big Band sent the audience off into Sunday night in high spirits for the performance by the band Oùat, followed by a closing party at Quasimodo.
»60 years of Jazzfest Berlin means 60 years together with the jazz departments of ARD and Deutschlandradio (and its predecessors). The idea that generations of editors before us had already broadcast the programmes, planned processes and sometimes passionately argued about music – this idea resonated in 2024. The videos from our archives (Carla Bley, Miriam Makeba, Ornette Coleman ... amazing!) made this history almost tangible. The motto of the anniversary edition was: Past – Present – Future. With Joe McPhee and Joachim Kühn, legendary jazz greats played whose long past is only part of an ongoing creative process.
The Jazzfest presented strong sounds of the present – such as the eruptive collective brew of Sun-Mi Hong or the complex layered grooves of Kris Davis and Terri Lyne Carrington. Davis and Carrington also took part in discussions as part of the Research Lab. International academics examined the festival's history in the light of social change and asked questions about innovation, gender, race and changing programming.
Today, the contemporary curation of the festival – in addition to the search for artistic quality – increasingly aims to open up new spaces for discourse and experience, as well as sustainability and participation. The multi-day Community Lab Moabit showed that looking to the future is also about encountering other cultures and inspiring even the youngest to improvise, to listen to each other and to search for a common groove. Perhaps they are the jazz community of tomorrow. The immensely varied concert programme provided us with really good fodder for three live broadcasts and a long ARD Jazz Night. Our thanks go to Nadin Deventer and the whole great team. Here's to the next 60 years!«
– Stefan Gerdes (NDR), Spokesperson for the ARD-Gremium
The Jazzfest Berlin concerts were recorded and broadcast live by ARD and Deutschlandradio and broadcast on ARD Jazznacht. They are still available for listening in the media libraries of the broadcasters and the Berliner Festspiele Mediathek.
Jazzfest Berlin 2025 will take place from 30 October to 2 November under the artistic direction of Nadin Deventer, who will also be responsible for the other festival editions up to and including 2027.
Press images and press releases are available in the Jazzfest Berlin press section.
Research Lab in the Media Library
A talk with the former festival directors John Corbett, Peter Schulze, Bert Noglik, Richard Williams and the current director Nadin Deventer is already available in the media library. The presentations by the Research Lab scientists on their contributions to the anniversary magazine will be uploaded to the media library in the coming days.
Concerts Online on the Radio
The concert broadcasts of the Jazzfest Berlin 2024 by ARD and Deutschlandradio as well as the long ARD Jazz Night are still available to listen to in the ARD audio library and the DeutschlandfunkKultur media library. At the festival, the ARD jazz editors presented a new online service that will bundle all ARD jazz topics – audio and video.
Jazzfest Berlin is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Sponsors and project partners of the festival are the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Jazz Institut Berlin and the Steinway Haus.
Media partners are ARTE, Dussmann, Cee Cee, Monopol, Wall and Yorck Kinogruppe.
Jazzfest Berlin is a member of the Europe Jazz Network and the Keychange initiative.