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In his original liner notes to A Love Supreme, John Coltrane wrote: “Yes, it is true — ‘seek and ye shall…
Concert images from this year’s jazzahead! conference, clockwise from top left: Schubert NOW, Nils Kugelmann Trio, Kasiva Mutua, Benjamin Jephta Sextet.
(Photo: Jens Schlenker)Bremen, Germany, is certainly not one of the most likely spots for the world’s largest annual jazz industry gathering. But that unlikelihood didn’t deter more than 20,000 musicians, presenters, producers, agents, media and other professionals from 60 countries from descending on the northwest German city for this year’s edition of jazzahead!, which took place April 24–26.
And they weren’t just professionals looking to exchange business cards. One wing of the jazzahead! trade fair is devoted to a jazz festival that this year featured more than 130 concerts across the city.
Of these, the main focal point is in the international showcase concerts that take place within (and adjacent to) the Bremen Exhibition Centre. It included 38 concerts by jazz artists from 29 countries — with a special emphasis on this year’s partner regions of Spain, France and Switzerland. This, organizers say, makes for a cross-section of known and rising artists from around the world.
As you might expect with so many concerts, the quality was as varied as the geography. The best acts, though, were truly magical.
At the top of that list was Juanjo Corbalán, a harpist based in Asunción, Paraguay. Corbalán won the 2022 World Harp Competition, and his April 24 performance at the Exhibition Centre proved that that was no fluke. He and his quartet navigated traditional Paraguayan rhythms and indigenous-influenced melodies, charging them with high-voltage swing and remarkable technique. It didn’t escape notice that there was no bassist among his band (saxophone, piano and drums); the surprise was that for all Corbalán’s dreamy melodic lines and patterns on the Paraguayan harp, he kept one hand constantly playing a bottom-end pulse. The virtuosity was dizzying.
“Dizzying” is also a good word for Nuremberg’s ’Oumuamua Orchestra, a 19-piece self-described “experimenting freelance big band.” The music itself during their April 25 showcase featured a wide-palette sound with a cinematic sweep (leader/keytarist Evgenij Zelikman called it “a supersonic interstellar progressive punk-jazz journey”) that instantly reminded this critic of Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society. The dizzying part was Zelikman, who conducted the band with … let’s just say enthusiasm is an understatement. He jumped, leaped, made gestures with his arms akimbo and at times looked ready to charge his soloists. This brought a zealous energy to the performance, which Zelikman himself summed up after the first tune, shouting, “Yeah! Rock and roll!”
On the evening of April 25 came jazzahead!’s largest musical offering. “Clubnight 2025” moved the music out into the city, with 85 concerts scheduled on 35 stages around Bremen in a manner not unlike the Marathon that New York’s Winter Jazzfest offers each year. Participants can make the rounds of multiple venues, or set up for the evening taking in the bands at just one club. I opted for the Baltic Jazz showcase at Zentrum für Kunst, an exhibit and performance space on the left bank of the Weser River. Unexpected traffic kept me from seeing the opening act, Estonian duo Kadri Voorand and Mihkel Mälgand. But that allowed me to get directly to Latvia’s Matīss Čudarss.
Čudarss initially set me up for disappointment. The guitarist and eponymous trio leader opened his set with a stretch of loud, overdriven, Jimi Hendrix-like riffs that left me rolling me eyes 10 seconds into his concert. That, it turned out, was a bait-and-switch. When the bass and drums got moving, it was in a much more subtle head-bob groove, and Matiss settled down into a mellow, slightly skewed perspective with a soft touch, beautiful earthy tone and occasional blues licks: Halvorson (or perhaps Pirog) meets Frisell (or perhaps Scofield). That kind of surreal layering over roots music is the kind of thing jazz needs right now.
(About the evening’s closer, Lithuanian duo Weird Ugly Fish, the less said the better. Suffice to say that they lived up to their adjectives.)
Stationed back at the Exhibition Centre for the final day of jazzahead!, I popped in next door at the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof (a concert hall inside a historic 19th-century slaughterhouse, believe it or not) for the Polish quintet Unleashed Cooperation. This was perhaps the event’s most pleasant surprise. The band bills itself as free-jazz; knowing something of the Eastern European strain of that sound, I expected the harsh stuff to be on display. Instead, Unleashed Cooperation was accessible, lyrical and rode on a graceful momentum that was still spontaneous and unpolished (especially when trumpeter Patryk Rynkiewicz put his horn to his lips), yet also a serene note on which to end the proceedings. Bremen might not be on many lay jazz fans’ lists of places to go, but what a feast it lays out in jazzahead! DB
“This is one of the great gifts that Coltrane gave us — he gave us a key to the cosmos in this recording,” says John McLaughlin.
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