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top down: Frankfurt am Main: Jazz
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Frankfurt prides itself on being the "German Jazz Capital" - and it is true, you do find good jazz music at Frankfurt clubs and festivals. Like Berlin and Hamburg, Frankfurt became a center of jazz in the 1920's. In 1928 the Dr.Hochsche Konservatorium started a jazz class - probably worldwide the first formal jazz training. Swing Music was so popular in the 1930's, that Nazis found it difficult to ban. In Frankfurt and in other German cities, there was an underground scene of young people, who loved Swing Music, dressed in a kind of English-American style, listened to international radio broadcasts, had parties, hunted for jazz records, and played Swing Music. In 1941 local Swing musicians founded the Frankfurt Hot Club. The trumpet player and music theoretician Carlo Bohlaender, the musicians Emil and Albert Mangelsdorff, the percussionist and concert organizer Horst Lippmann were members of this 1940's Swing scene. In 1945 Frankfurt Swing musicians hiding from the Nazis suddenly found themselves in ideal surroundings: One week after the armistice US Army authorities granted Carlo Bohlaender permission for a jazz concert. US Army headquarters moved into the IG-Farben Poelzig building at Frankfurt Grueneburg Park, the Rhein-Main Air Base became the main source of supplies, a great number of American barracks and posts were built in the Rhein-Main area. In the numerous army clubs German musicians now had the chance to perfom with American musicians in front of an American audience. In 1951 Horst Lippmann celebrated the 10 years of the Frankfurt Hot Club by organizing a concert. The event turned out to successful, that he repeated the concert in 1952 and finally in 1953 - When the German Jazz Federation held its annual conference in Frankfurt - he founded the German Jazz Festival the oldest jazz festival of the world still in existence today. Nowadays the Hessische Rundfunk Broadcasting Corporation organizes the German Jazz-Festival every autumn. In 1952 another Frankfurt jazz legend began: the Jazzkeller club and pub. You can buy the recordings of the first German Jazz Festival in 1953 including sets of Hans (=James) Last, Paul Kuhn, Max Greger, Guenther Fullisch, Delle Haensch, Fred Bunge, Franz von Klenck, Gerd Huehns und Teddy Paris - via amazon.co.uk or posted from Germany via jpc.de. Also availabe via amazon.co.uk, amazon.com or posted from Germany via jpc.de are the recordings of the German Jazz Festivals of 1954 and 1955. The recordings include traditional jazz by the Two Beat Stompers, the September Song by the Rolf Kuehn Allstars, Swing by Paul Kuhn, Cool Jazz by Jutta Hipp and Albert Mangelsdorff, Big Band Sound by Kurt Edelhagen featuring Caterina Valente. Like Rolf Kuehn, the designer and piano player Jutta Hipp came from the Leipzig jazz scene of the 1940's. She led a quintet in Frankfurt from 1953 - 1955. Like Rolf Kuehn, Jutta Hipp was successful in the United States: She played her Cool Jazz at the New York Hickory House, Blue Note published recordings of her sets, she took part in the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. In 1958 she finished her career as a musician. 13 years were enough for her to be remembered by remarkable recordings: You obtain them via amazon.co.uk, amazon.com or posted from Germany via jpc.de - Jutta Hipp and her quintet, with Hans Koller, with Lars Gullin, At the New York Hickory House I and At the New York Hickory House II, or with Zoot Sims. One of the first - ironic - attempts to write a history of German jazz is Die Opa Hirchleitner Story Plus of the year 1958 republished recently - a CD with the music of Albert und Emil Mangelsdorff, Hans Koller, Joki Freund, Pepsi Auer, Dusko Gojkovich, Rudi Sehring and Peter Trunk including a booklet with the - German - text by the journalist H. Werner Wunderlich. Over the years new musicians joined Frankfurt's jazz scene: the bass player Guenter Lenz, the saxophone player Heinz Sauer, the percussionist Ralf Huebner, the sociologist, cartoonist and guitar player Volker Kriegel, the piano player Bob Degen, the saxophone player Christof Lauer, the bass player and composer Vitold Rek, the saxophone player Tony Lakatos, the guitar player Michael Sagmeister, the saxophone player Corinna Danzer, the guitar player Martin Lejeune, the organ player Maggie Scott .... Frankfurt's Jazz-Tradition is continued today by the "Jazzinitiative". You can study "Jazz and Popular Music" at Frankfurt's Music Academy. And nearby in Darmstadt you find the Jazz-Institut, the largest information and jazz documentation center in Europe, the third largest in the world. In Frankfurt's Carmelite Cloister, up to January 2005, you can visit the exhibition of the Frankfurt Historical Institute on the "Frankfurt Sound". Available on DVD is 1993's 'Swing Kids' via amazon.com or amazon.co.uk. The movie is set in the 1940's German swing scene of the Nazi era. top of page << |
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