Since it was held for the first time in 1964, Jazzfest Berlin has been a platform for musicians from around the world. Over the years it has enjoyed particularly close links with musicians from the USA. In this year full of social challenges and political unrest and only a few days after the presidential election in the USA, Jazzfest Berlin 2020 will build upon this transatlantic dialogue in defiance of the coronavirus crisis and places the creative centres of New York and Berlin in the centre of the 57th edition. Due to the renovation of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the festival will take place in the silent green for the first time.
With the silent green in Berlin-Wedding and the partner venue Roulette in Brooklyn-New York, a celebrated centre for experimental music and performing arts, this year’s festival will take place on two days of concerts, alternating between two continents. Jazzfest Berlin – New York will link the Roulette’s theatre directly with the Betonhalle at silent green using a dedicated streaming line to allow twelve top quality bands to enter into a dialogue.
Also under the sign of Berlin – New York is Jazzfest Berlin Off Stage, another novelty of the festival: nine commissioned video works dealing with life in times of the corona pandemic in Berlin and New York, produced by Camae Aweya (aka Moor Mother), Matana Roberts and Jason Moran, TRAINING feat. Dieterich/Karataş and KIM Collective. They will be published successively at Berliner Festspiele on Demand until the festival starts. At the end of the festival, members of the KIM Collective will transfer their videos in collaboration with other actors of the Berlin scene into the live performance De-Isolation.
In Jazzfest Berlin Outer Spaces international sub-scenes from Berlin and London form new interdisciplinary line-ups in three commissioned works. In site-specific works, the artists will stage the planetarium-like architecture of the Kuppelhalle. The creative heads are the Swedish Joel Grip and duo Witch ’n’ Monk from Berlin, and the pianist Alexander Hawkins from London with visual artist and rapper Siska.
In the Jazzfest Berlin Radio Edition the festival is intensifying its decades-long partnership with the German public service radio. A series of regional ensembles, each selected by the broadcasters throughout ARD’s national network, will present nine studio to be heard on the radio throughout Germany and seen online by video stream anywhere in the world.
Jazzfest Berlin 2020 / JETZT ERST RECHT: NOW IS THE TIME!
Thursday 5th-Sunday 8th November 2020 | Times vary
silent green | Gerichtstraße 35 | 13347 BERLIN
berlinerfestspiele.de/Jazzfest | Event @ Facebook
Photo © HuPe Kollektiv
