Michael Moore Quintet // Presentation German Jazz Award // Michael Mantler

Michael Moore Quintet

American reed player Michael Moore is a kind of “late offshoot” of the 1970s’ Fools movement. Available Jelly, originally founded as an accompanying band for the Great Salt Lake Mime Troup, had its eyes set on Europe very early on: Amsterdam, what else?! Later on, vested with a proper work permit, Moore co-operated with musicians like Han Bennink, Ernst Reijseger, and Georg Gräwe as well as with the ICP Orkest, and played a major part in the creation of an authentic European alternative to the prototype jazz of his home country.

While always strongly attracted to free improvisation, he never attempted to conceal his affinity to folkloristic playfulness and an almost dandy-like elegance. The softness of his tone has often contrasted with the shrill eccentricity of his musical peers. Moore is an untiring intermediary between musical conceptions, traditions, and the continents. Trumpeter Eric Vloeimans is an exponent of the young jazz scene in the Netherlands, whose distinct sense for broadly arching melody lines compliments Moore’s exclusive tone.

Presentation German Jazz Award: Gunter Hampel

Since 1994 the ‘Deutscher Jazzpreis’ (German Jazz Award) is biannually granted by the ‘Union Deutscher Jazzmusiker’ (UDJ) to an “outstanding and epoch-making Jazz personality”.

Also known as ‘Albert Mangelsdorff Award’ laureates so far have been Alexander von Schlippenbach, Peter Kowald, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Heinz Sauer, Wolfgang Schlüter, Ulrike Haage and Ulrich Gumpert.

This year vibraphonist, bass-clarinettist, composer and Gesamtkunstwerk Gunter Hampel will be presented with the award endowed by GEMA.

Michael Mantler ‘Concertos’

Back in the mid 60s, in the context of the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Michael Mantler and Carla Bley developed a completely new coordinate system for improvisation and structure. Mantler’s avant-garde approach to the musical medium big band has revolutionised large-scale free jazz. Among many others he performed with Cecil Taylor and Charlie Haden. Since the 1970s he has been renowned for his multilayered song cycles and symphonic projects in which he combines abstract beauty with structural strictness.

Today, the reticent trumpeter’s and composer’s stage appearances are rare. In his Concertos project, first conceived during a DAAD scholarship in Berlin, he reverts to and updates the concepts he created for the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra some forty years ago. Jazz, rock and chamber music now permeate each other; individual skill, distinct, original soloing and the unmistakable sound of the exquisite chamber orchestra Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin blend convincingly.