Lakecia Benjamin, Sun Ra Arkestra, Joe Lovano and more for Jazzfest Berlin 60th Anniversary Edition

The renowned Jazzfest Berlin runs  from 31 October to 3 November, and will celebrate its 60th anniversary with 24 concerts at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Quasimodo, A-Trane and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. This year, the concert programme is bolstered by two anniversary specials: the Jazzfest Research Lab and the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit.

These two special project threads will see the JazzfestResearch Lab take an in-depth look at the festival’s past, while the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit that looks to the festival’s future, serving as a continuation of the Jazzfest ImproCamp for children from the last edition of the festival. A diverse supporting programme is also on offer with panel discussions, artist talks, presentations of academic research and oral histories, poster and photo exhibitions as well as film screenings of concert recordings from ARD.

Commenting on this year’s anniversary programme Artistic Director Jazzfest Berlin, Nadin Deventer said: “Having teamed up with a number of new partners for the Research and Community Lab, we aim to gain new insights into contemporary and trend-setting festival production. Both birthday specials are unique mobilisation and outreach projects that stand out from the festival's history, questioning what we take for granted, leaving our comfort zones and creating new sources of inspiration in tandem with this year's Jazzfest Berlin concert programme.”

Highlights of the concert programme include two appearances by US American pianist Marilyn Crispell who appears both in a solo performance and in Trio Tapestry with US saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Carmen Castaldi. Other musicians at the festival who have shaped the history of improvisation include multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and pianist Joachim Kühn, the latter will be celebrating the world premiere of his new French Trio with drummer Sylvain Darrifourcq and bassist Thibault Cellier. There’s also a premiere of the legendary Japanese guitarist Otomo Yoshihide and his 17-piece Special Big Band, plus the eternally questing Sun Ra Arkestra, who first performed at the festival in 1970, and will be travelling from the US for a highly anticipated performance.

Further additions to the programme include current projects involving Swedish musicians such as the Unfolding Orchestra with double bassist Vilhelm Bromander; the expanded free jazz group Extended Attack with saxophonist Anna Högberg; the Tropiques project with trumpeter Goran Kajfeš, the trio Oùat with Berlin-based Joel Grip and the joint project Musho by vocal artist Sofia Jernberg and pianist Alexander Hawkins. From the USA, saxophonist Darius Jones returns to Berlin for the first time in years with his highly acclaimed new project, fLuXkit Vancouver (it's suite but sacred). Leading pianists Sylvie Courvoisier from Switzerland and Kris Davis from Canada will also be performing with cutting-edge line-ups from the New York scene and beyond.

They will also be joined by current voices from the USA: saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, Berlin-based drummer Devin Gray and the newly founded Brooklyn quartet Wrens with the exceptional Austrian pianist Elias Stemeseder, who divides his time between Berlin and New York. Players from the European scene appearing also include the BIDA Orchestra from Amsterdam with the exceptional Korean drummer Sun-Mi Hong, the trio De Beren Gieren from Ghent, the quartet The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters with electronic musician Mariam Rezaei from London and Argentinian Berliner Camila Nebbia in a trio with Kit Downes and Andrew Lisle.

Acclaimed Montreal drummer/composer John Hollenbeck will present his current project GEORGE with Anna Webber, Sarah Rossy and Chiquita Magic. In a Bühnenhaus special, he will be exploring Martin Luther King’s last sermon in Atlanta in 1968 through a multimedia Berlin version of his project ‘The Drum Major Instinct’. There’s also a world premiere from the Malacoda String Quartet led by Italian bassist and Berlin-based Antonio Borghini with a performance of the ‘Mystery String Quartet’, the final two string quartet compositions by cellist Tristan Honsinger, who died in 2023. These compositions have never been performed before.

For full line-up details and tickets visit www.berlinerfestspiele.de