Filed under: live reviews | Tags: Andrew Pekler, berlin, echtzeitmusiktage, Groupshow, Hanno Leichtmann, Jan Jelinek
Jan Jelinek’s Groupshow rocked! Read the review on tokafi.com.
Jan Jelinek (right)
Comparing 2010′s Echtzeitmusiktage to last year’s event named TITO (The International Turnable Orchestra) makes sense. Also produced by Ignaz Schick’s Zangi Music, it featured some of the best improv/experimental turntablists (see review here) and combined solo, small or large one-off formations, compositions or improvisations: all in four busy days and one big institutional venue in West Berlin: the Akademie der Künste. People did come to the festival, but maybe not enough. Sitting in the large hall with lots of empty seats around, I remember having wished for a more intimate location.
It looks like the organizers have improved many things this year. Echtzeitmusiktage’s concerts took place in five different venues situated in the creative center of the German capital: four in East Berlin, one in Kreuzberg—with Neukölln, Kreuzberg is the most East-minded and cosmopolitan district in West Berlin. The free spirit was definitely alive: most musicians, craving for exciting and unlikely collaborations, took part in more than one concert (not necessarily of the same genre), although no band appeared twice. And more important, the venues were smaller, intimate, adapted, and relatively packed with people. It was nice to see everyone everywhere, Thomas Ankersmit attending Stephan Mathieu’s concert, Chris Abrahams or Burkhard Beins at Vladislav Delay Quartet’s. The festival was the occasion to know or go further into Berlin’s underground scene, which seems to create and sustain friendly relations with Italian, Swiss and Australian artists in particular. It’s a small world—but it’s not autarchic.
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