‘Healing’ Theme Empowers Heidelberg’s Enjoy Jazz Fest

By Dan Ouellette I Dec. 3, 2024

Vijay Iyer was among the jazz-eclectic noteworthies at this year’s Enjoy Jazz festival.
(Photo: Adonis Malamos)

From Oct. 2 to Nov. 2, Heidelberg, the cultural hub of southwestern Germany, hosted the magnificent Enjoy Jazz–Festival for Jazz and More. It’s Germany’s largest such gala. In its 26th season, event organizers led by exuberant founder Rainer Kern assembled a massive package of fascinating daily shows in a variety of venues in Heidelberg, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Schwetzingen — none, however, within easy walking distance of each other.

The vast majority of jazz bashes offered throughout the year in the States and Europe feature performances that are bundled tightly together without a moment for reflection in between. Catch one show on the fly and often make a mad dash to get to the next stage. Not so at Enjoy. As Kern puts it with his 45 concerts spread across the calendar, it’s not only enjoyment in the joyous sense of the word, but it’s also ruminative in nature, a time to savor. That’s when the real joy sinks in.

What’s fascinating is Enjoy’s thematic branding. Last year’s theme was “trust,” while this year was “healing.” The idea behind it is that the act of listening to music has a healing impact. Music empowers. The motto informed the acts and mused on the region’s legacy.

In many ways the mountain-rung region of Heidelberg has experienced a healing in its history. It was the rare city in Germany spared by the Allies bombing during World War II, preserving its long and narrow pedestrian streets with thriving shops and restaurants. And after more than 70 years, since 2013, it is no longer occupied by the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s military presence of more than 20,000 soldiers. In its place, Heidelberg has become a city of innovation — as partially evidenced in the music germination.

As a visitor to Enjoy, you’re bound to miss a lot of the marquee acts of forward-thrusting musicians, unless you camp out there for two months for the steady diet of at least one show per night. This year’s jazz-eclectic noteworthies included artist-in-residence Nduduzo Makhathini, Vijay Iyer, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Kris Davis, Nicole Mitchell, David Murray, Meshell Ndegeocello, Avishai Cohen, Ghost-Note among many others.

I made my truncated visit the long weekend of Oct. 18–21. To use the word again, it was pure enjoyment. Four shows in four days. Three of the four featured piano variety, and the last night, for me, a vocal revelation.

Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski, a longtime ECM artist who mentored under Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, celebrated the 60th anniversary of his trio with bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz. The Oct. 18 two-set show took place at Schwetzingen’s grand Rokokotheater with its opera-like balconies. There was a quiet, interrupted by a splash of drama plus dynamic mystery, with each band member feeding off the other. They were tight, but this standard piano trio setup never fully launched, with fine playing and lyrical drive but seldom achieving an intimacy.

Oct. 19 belonged to remarkable pianist Tania Giannouli. She brought thunder and elegance to her 90-minute solo performance of improvisational surprises. She reigned at Heidelberg’s Friedenskirche church, an old structure that was completely restored inside with a sonics-friendly dome.

Playing to a sold-out crowd, Giannouli opened her intoxicating show with mystery within the box, making the strings growl, then lightly stroking them as if to make the instrument fully come alive. She then passionately dove into her first number with left-hand urgency and lyrical beauty in her right hand as she melded together her classical training, love of jazz and an inherent sense of her native Greek folklore.

Key to Giannouli’s show were the surprises conjured by her adventurous abstract improvisation: moving moods, building climaxes, dancing into full blooms, playful shimmers, dynamic screeching and scratching. From her 2023 album Solo, she twisted and turned the complex melody of “Spiral.” Standing above the keys, she plucked and bent the strings by hand and expanded the piano’s range with an array of prepared piano objects — sheets of paper, small mallets, chimes, pieces of cloth, hardened gum — tucked in the box. It was a sonic wonder.

On Oct. 20, solo piano once again took center stage. However, it was an unadventurous disappointment with Bill Laurance playing at Heidelberg’s Metropolinks Commissionary. A co-founder of Snarky Puppy, Laurance demonstrated his prowess on the Yamaha grand’s keys with his influences flowing from jazz, classical and rock. He dazzled with his harmonic ecstasy. He gave an impressive display of embellished colors. But Laurance came up short. Melody seemed to be missing. Little was memorable about each tune, with no lyrical line to anchor. He did cover a Bill Evans tune, but it proved uneventful.

My Enjoy finale featured the jazz-infused singer of the progressive future, Arooj Aftab, who was recently nominated for a Grammy.

On Oct. 21 at Heidelberg’s Karistorbahnhof stage, sun-glassed and dressed all in black, the Pakistani/NewYork singer–composer emphasized the dark with music from her recent release Night Reign. It’s her fourth album and comes in the shadow of her surprising 2022 Grammy win for Best Global Music Performance for her catchy tune “Mohabbat” from her 2021 album Vulture Prime. She’s welcoming the step forward in the evolutionary jazz world.

Singing in her native language (Urdu) and English, Aftab channeled her world travels in her music, which today is immersed in New York’s future-bound, boundaries-abandoned music scene.

With her luscious, mysterious voice, Aftab opened her night hymns with a tune rooted in minimalism and jazz followed by “a mood song” that was playful, soul-searching, sexy and dynamic. Then came “Whiskey,” one of the best songs on the new album. She told the crowd it was about drinking too much in a rush of romance and desire, then getting lost trying to find her way home. She sang about the moon and the act of letting go. Undergirding the music was, as she has said, “the night as a time of mischief and enchantment. It’s my biggest source of inspiration.”

Aftab’s string accompaniment was superb, featuring Darian Donovan Thomas on violin, Gyan Riley on electric guitar and Petros Klampanis on bass. They were totally in sync with her, at times sounding as huge as an orchestra, then delicately painting colors.

In the green room after the show, Aftab welcomed a conversation about her music. “I like the night,” she says. “We all do. They call us jazz cats, and cats roam around at night. I’m looking for something simple enough that’s quite obvious in our lives. But these stories also have a range of depth, like with ‘Whiskey,’ trying to get home. You meet someone and it’s crazy. It happens more when you’re young, happening in the night in a lighthearted way. You think the song is about getting drunk with whiskey, but it’s really about much more in our lives.”

While Aftab identifies with jazz — on her latest album she collaborates with fellow seeker Vijay Iyer and impressive pianist James Francies on her unique interpretation of “Autumn Leaves” — she journeys beyond. “I don’t know how to say what I am,” she said. “It’s just a very personable style. It’s what the music sounds like in my head. I’m interested in different styles and cultures to make a big personal, natural-sounding thing. It’s unapologetic. It doesn’t play by the rules. But at the same time, there’s a lot of deliciousness in the choices I make.”

In true Enjoy sentiment, it’s Aftab’s healing. DB