Jazzfest Berlin 2022 bounces back to real life post-pandemic
Mike Flynn
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
After the two hybrid festival editions with digital bridges to New York, Johannesburg, Cairo and São Paulo due to the pandemic, Jazzfest Berlin 2022 returns to the real-world space from 3-6 November
The festival will welcome over 145 international musicians from all over the world to the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and surrounding venues from 3 to 6 November in the German capital. The 59th edition of the festival takes place in the recently renovated Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Pierre Boulez Saal, the nearby clubs A-Trane and Quasimodo, and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche.
Artists from 25 countries in 37 acts comprise this year's festival, with the programme also including numerous German and Berlin premieres. The line-up features established greats of the US avant garde scene such as Craig Taborn, Matana Roberts and Kris Davis, musicians influenced by spiritual jazz and black radical aesthetics such as Hamid Drake and Immanuel Wilkins, as well as emerging newcomers like saxophonist Isaiah Collier, drummer Sun-Mi Hong, Chicago cornetist Ben Lamar Gay and pianist Kirke Karja (below).
The South African jazz scene is represented too, with Asher Gamedze and the Johannesburg collective The Brother Moves On; improvising musicians inspired by folkloristic musical traditions such as Kateryna Ziabliuk from Ukraine, Olga Kozieł from Poland (Lumpeks), Sofia Jernberg (‘Musho’, or 'Sad Song' in the Ethiopian language Amharic) or Lucian Ban from Romania (‘Transylvanian Folk Songs’); European free jazz pioneers such as Swedish drummer and composer Sven-Åke Johansson and skronk sax supremo Peter Brötzmann as well as protagonists of the younger generations such as Mette Rasmussen and Rodrigo Amado.
All concerts of the Jazzfest Berlin 2022 will be recorded by ARD and Deutschlandradio and broadcasted live or time-shifted. For the full programme and tickets, visit www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/jazzfestberlin