XJAZZ Festival – Berlin – May 8-11 2014

Successfully blowing the dust off the jazz-genre. A new festival is coming to Berlin later this week.

05/05/2014
by NBHAP News Team

XJAZZ Festival

XJAZZ is a newborn Berlin based Jazz-Festival focussing a rather contemporary view on the genre. From 8.-11. of Mai 2014 several Locations in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain stage Jazz, Electronica, Neo-Klassik and Singer-/Songwriter Acts like: EMILIANA TORRINI, NIGHTMARES ON WAX, SCHWARZMANN (FRANK WIEDEMANN & HENRIK SCHWARZ), NILES PATER MOLVAER & MORITZ VON OSWALD, FRANCESCO TRISTANO, KURT ROSENWINKEL, DAVID ORLOWSKY & DOMINIQUE HORWITZ, ERIC SCHAEFER, MICATONE, MOP MOP, CHRISTIAN PROMMER & KELVIN SHOLAR, CHRISTOPHER DELL and many more.

The exceptionally well curated festival gives an insight to the living Berlin Jazz-scene. Whereas established Jazz-events mostly present stylistically bound line-ups: XJAZZ forms unique and often surprising constellations with local artists. By choosing Iceland as partnership-country, two cutting-edge music-scenes are connected to innovate and blow the dust off a genre.

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XJAZZ

How’s Jazz in Berlin Doing? XJAZZ! Premiers “Entangled Grounds”

This year, the Berliner XJAZZ! Festival premiered their first album. "Entangled Grounds" is a collaborative effort, much in the spirit of the event. Each song features a different artist from the local jazz scene and their (re)interpretations of the genre. Anna Grubauer experienced the festival and spoke to artists and organisers about the recording process.

Where Two Worlds Intersect: Ry X And Frank Wiedemann Return As Howling

For this little video conversation, the two members of Howling only meet each other virtually. One being on vacation with his family where it suddenly started to rain heavily, the other sitting in his light filled living room in sunny California – two high-contrasted worlds, just like Frank Wiedemann and Ry Cumings musical backgrounds are. As the two didn’t talk much during the last few months, they were pretty happy to see each other and laughed a lot during the conversation our editor Miriam Wallbaum had with the two gentlemen when talking about their second LP "Colure."

“About Acknowledging The Roots”: Catching Up With Chelsea Carmichael

One of Britain’s rising jazz musicians, the acclaimed London act delivered one of the most brimming shows at this year’s XJAZZ! edition in Berlin. We caught up for a quick chat with the artist after the show to talk about the British scene and what it means to honour the legacy of jazz music.