(Reprinted from the November 19 issue of Downbeat online)
In curating the Jazzfest Berlin, which ran Nov. 5-8, Artistic Director Nadin Deventer always looks for a unifying narrative. This year, the Festival’s narrative wrote itself. But the plot twists had kept Deventer hustling for months.
“To do this Festival in the time of Covid was unbelievable,” she said in a Zoom call from Berlin. “We already had a hundred balls in the air, and then the world turned upside down.”
Deventer and her two-person production team had just finalized their programming for the November event when the virus struck in March. JazzFest Berlin, now in its 57th year, typically showcases 30-40 projects each edition, with a leaning toward the avant garde, the experimental, and the outré.
Uncertain of how the pandemic would proceed, the team remained optimistic for the November event. But by summer, new social distancing regulations in Germany translated into a loss of almost 90 percent of the Festival’s seats at secret green, the main concert venue—a financial blow and an artistic upset. Deventer was forced to reassess the Festival’s programming.
In June, she reached out to Roulette Intermedium, a like-minded music venue in downtown Brooklyn, with a proposition—a live-streamed concert experience, before limited audiences. “JazzFest Berlin-New York,” as the nucleus of the broader festival, would encompass 12 sets on Nov. 6-7, aired in tandem from the two cultural capitals. Roulette agreed.
“Then we started inventing our trans-Atlantic bridge,” Deventer said.
That bridge was a complex tech hook-up between the two stages, designed to deliver television-quality broadcasts of the live performances via the respective websites of Roulette, ARTE Concert, and Berliner Festspiele on Demand.
Deventer’s foresight proved fortuitous, given increasing pandemic-related restrictions: By September, foreign musicians were unable to travel to Berlin. And by late October, the German government had cancelled all large events throughout the country. But the concerts, deployed via the trans-Atlantic bridge, could happen as planned.
Under the close scrutiny of Roulette’s built-in camera system, the New York performances took on an immediacy rarely felt from an orchestra seat. Through the high-precision video, the remote audience could see how altoist Lakecia Benjamin’s unruffled concentration sustained her break-neck solos on tunes from her March release, Pursuance: The Coltranes (Ropeadope). How the free-wheeling ethos of reedist Anna Webber’s compositions—from her album Clockwise (Pi)—actually arises out of her septet’s meticulous attention to written scores. How graciously inclusive vibraphonist Joel Ross is with his band, Good Vibes, as they interpret his sweepingly romantic compositions from Who Are You? (Blue Note). And how effortlessly drummer Tomas Fujiwara drives the spontaneous passages of his cleverly configured sextet, Triple Double.
Likewise, in Berlin, a tight camera zeroed in on Lina Allemano and her trio Ohrenschmaus, with its odd sounds (a bow on the electric bass, a stick through a punctured drum head)—the surprising accents that characterize the trumpeter’s open-structured compositions. Awash in blue light, keyboardist Dan Nicholls and drummer Ludwig Wandinger used moody electronics and sleek hip-hop techniques to refashion the ambient moods of the experimental group Y-Otis. And drummer Jim Black’s eponymous trio focused intently on their instruments throughout indefatigable improvising—a visual that underscored the visceral.
In the middle of the Festival’s most dramatic performance—that of the funny, raucous free jazz quartet MEOW!—Deventer held her cell phone up to the silent green camera. “Joe Biden beats Donald Trump to win US election,” read the screen.
Deventer later explained the significance of that moment. “The political and social events that happened in the U.S. over the summer encouraged us to focus on New York-based artists,” she said. “It’s an important cultural exchange.”
But back in Brooklyn, sounds of celebration in the streets were leaking onto the Roulette stage as saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Kris Davis launched into a program of contemplative, minimalist compositions from their album Blood Moon (Intakt). In a post-performance discussion, WBGO’s Keanna Faircloth noted the cheering outside.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it,” she remarked. (In New York, Faircloth shared moderator duties with colleague Nate Chinen.)
Cheers were, however, the main thing missing from the broadcasts. For improvisatory artists like pianist Craig Taborn, a participatory crowd contributes vital energy to a live performance. At Roulette, his new compositions for trio reeled intoxicatingly from one rousing musical notion to the next, finishing with an expectant outro—in an empty hall.
“Where you really notice the [lack of audience] is at the end of the tune,” Taborn recalled. “There’s a weird feeling of—‘are we done’?”
Noting the same, saxophonist Silke Eberhard intentionally grouped her 10-player ensemble, Potsa Lotsa XL, in a circle on the silent green stage to keep the mood buoyant during streaming. Vibrant and refreshing, her program honoring sax legend Henry Threadgill, Silver and Gold, Baby, Silver and Gold, emphasized playfulness over bite for an apt denouement to the Festival’s eventful storyline.
In an unexpected email sent just after the concert’s close, Threadgill thanked Eberhard for the tribute. “That was the best thing that could have happened,” she said.
Not the only good thing, however. By the end of the weekend, 40,000 listeners—enough to fill a sports arena—had visited the Festival’s site. “That’s of another dimension,” Deventer observed. DB