German Jazz Meeting

Darmstadt meets Bremen

Jazzinstitut will provide information on its activities at the jazzahead!-fair in Bremen. Exciting panels on jazz journalism, and German Jazz Meeting 2008.

For a long week-end, lasting from Thursday to Sunday, April 18th to 21st, Europe’s largest public archive on jazz presents its various activities at Bremen’s CongressCentrum. Together with the Klaus-Kuhnke-Archiv fuer populaere Musik, located at the Bremen University, the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt will provide information about its wide range of activities, from scholarly publications, jazz research services to exhibitions, conferences, workshops and jazz concerts.

We look forward to welcome you at our fair stand B10/B12 (right in front of the Borgward-Saal) in Bremen at jazzahead! (www.jazzahead.de), April 18 to 21, 2008.

One major project of the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt will be presented to the public at jazzahead!, too: For the second time, the German Jazz Meeting, a bi-annual showcase festival will present the richness and variety of the contemporary German jazz and improvisation scene to an international and national audience. As a showcase festival it focuses on the current creative German Jazz scene and will present 12 outstanding bands from this country (www.germanjazzmeeting.de).

German Jazz Meeting is a coopperation with Messe- und Austellungsgesellschaft Hansa GmbH, and is funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the German Ministery for Foreign Affaires.

Also, we would like to recommend two further expert events during the jazzahead!-fair in Bremen. Two conference panels will discuss “Quality in Jazz Journalism” and “The Future of Jazz in Public Radio”, which are both held in English.
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The Topics in a Nutshell:

Quality in Jazz Journalism
April 18th 2008, 04:30-05:30 pm, Salon Franzius

In principle, jazz criticism faces the same dilemma as music criticism dies in general: there is no professional training for this field. On top of that, jazz first had to assert itself against so-called serious music in the media because providing information on the musical genre jazz was long considered an alibi for a medium’s youthfulness. Furthermore, jazz criticism was often written by jazz enthusiasts who saw themselves as defenders of jazz or by journalists who were more interested in the spectacle than in artistic composition. The fact that jazz involves a lot of improvisations and that there are rarely musical scores to hand down does not make criticism any easier. But despite all these problems - How is it possible to pursue high-quality jazz journalism?

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Sandner (Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main / Journalist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Speaker: Dieter Ilg (Musician), Stuart Nicholson (Journalist, UK), Jan Granlie (Journalist und Festival director, Norway)
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Future of Jazz in Public Radio
April 19th 2008, 04:30-06:00 pm, Lloyd Saal

Jazz on the radio has always had a bad image: too late, too short, too little, or threatened by the next programme reform. These eternal sweeping statements are always true - or always false, for it is impossible to prove or disprove them. A discussion panel moderated by Michael Rüsenberg attempts to look beyond the German borders into various parts of Europe to gain an overview in a divided landscape. The discussion will be held in English.

Moderation: Michael Rüsenberg (WDR)
Speaker: Roland Spiegel (BR), Arne Schumacher (Radio Bremen), John Walters (The Guardian, London), Thomas P. Illes (SwissGroove), Co de Kloet (NPS Holland)

!! Further information on the conference programme: Press Office jazzahead!, Andrea Bischoff, Phone +49 (0) 421 / 35 05 - 444, Fax +49 (0) 421 / 35 05 - 3 40, E-mail: bischoff@messe-bremen.de !!