German Jazz

Various Artists - Deutsches Jazz Festival, Frankfurt 1954-1955 (1990) {8CD Box Set Bear Family BCD 15430}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.58 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.21 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 121 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1954-55, 1990 Brunswick / Bear Family Records | BCD 15430
Jazz / Traditional Jazz / Cool / Continental Jazz / Jump / Swing / Big Band / Third Stream

8-CD box (LP-size) with 47-page book, 137 tracks. Playing time approx. 725 mns. The third German Jazz Festival in 1955 was a four-day event that featured nearly 30 groups and soloists. It was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon for release on Brunswick, but only parts of it were released on long-deleted EPs. The complete tapes survived though. The 1954 festival was also recorded, but only the portion issued on an EP was saved. Now the surviving portion of the 1954 festival and the entire 1955 festival are issued complete by Bear Family on eight CDs.

Despite the increasing number of compilations of rare jazz recordings in recent years, there has been very little focus on West German jazz from the sixties. How come?
A lack of creative output during this era cannot be blamed. Especially in the sixties, when a new generation of jazz musicians emerged in Germany. This generation was stylistically open, somewhere between modern jazz and avant-garde with a unique European style of expression. Recordings from artists such as Wolfgang Dauner, Joachim Kühn and Albert Mangelsdorff were beginning to appear. These artists would, among others, later establish the world-wide reputation of German jazz musicians. The question "How come?" still remains…

Featuring some of the finest avant-garde jazz players from Germany and beyond, the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble began life as a loose studio aggregation assembled for a youth-oriented German television show in 1975. Hoping for a contemporary balance between rock and jazz, producer Werner Schretzmeier called upon pianist Wolfgang Dauner, the former leader of Et Cetera, an avant-garde jazz group Schretzmeier had managed until their breakup in 1972. Initially recruiting musicians from his home base of Stuttgart (then a hotbed of avant-garde jazz), Dauner put together a rotating cast of musicians that were at first dubbed the Eleven and a Half Ensemble (after the program's airtime); this group featured guitarist Volker Kriegel (who shared writing and arranging duties with Dauner), drummer Jon Hiseman, trumpeter Ack Van Rooyen, and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff…