On 8 November, the ARTE livestream of the Jazzfest Berlin 2020 ended at 9:20 p.m. The livestream, which lasted a total of 1,500 minutes, was retrieved over 40,000 times during the four days of the festival (5 to 8 November). All 40 artistic contributions and 9 video productions are available in full length for 365 days on Berliner Festspiele on Demand and in the ARTE Concert Media Library.
The streaming of Jazzfest Berlin 2020 was realized by ARTE Concert in cooperation with rbb and the Institut für Bildbewegung and was available on ARTE Concert, on Berliner Festspiele on Demand, on the websites of the partner broadcasters, Roulette in New York, the US channel WBGO and the Europe Jazz Network. The Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago will broadcast individual concert recordings as special events on 27 to 28 November. The sound of the streaming was produced by rbb and Deutschlandradio. The concerts at the partner venue Roulette in Brooklyn, New York, were broadcasted live via a multi-channel video stream into the silent green Betonhalle, where they were brought into play by the on-site camera team as an additional image layer with the live recordings from New York. In addition, nine concerts in seven cities across Germany were pre-recorded as video or streamed live by Jazzfest Berlin in cooperation with the ARD broadcasters and Deutschlandradio in the series Jazzfest Berlin Radio Edition. Some of the concerts of Jazzfest Berlin 2020 were broadcasted live on the radio and excerpts were broadcasted during the long ARD-JazzNight. The radio stations will present the concert recordings of Jazzfest Berlin 2020 repeatedly in their broadcasts.
Nadin Deventer (artistic director Jazzfest Berlin): “Many thanks to the wonderful musicians and partners of this festival – in Berlin, across Germany and the USA. I would like to thank my team and all my colleagues at the Berliner Festspiele, at silent green, at SAVVY Contemporary and at Roulette in New York, who carried the festival into the world with thousands of cables, cameras and microphones, speakers and screens. Even though we had ultimately vainly tried to provide our audience with a concert experience on location with our live broadcast model, which was specially designed for the silent green Betonhalle, we hope that together with ARTE Concert we have found a way to offer our musicians a special platform with international reach.”
The Jazzfest Berlin 2020 started on 5 November with a kick-off – talks with musicians and artistic contributions – in the silent green Betonhalle. The following two festival days were characterized by the musical dialogue of the Jazzfest Berlin – New York, with six tandem concerts at the Roulette in Brooklyn and in the silent green Betonhalle. The bridge-building was further illustrated in the moderations by Nadin Deventer in the Betonhalle, Nate Chinen (WBGO) on Friday, 6 November, and Keanna Faircloth (WBGO) on Saturday, 7 November, in the Roulette, in which the artists at the respective concert venues were also included with short talks. In addition, the multimedia works from the Kuppelhalle were streamed live as part of Jazzfest Berlin Outer Spaces and studio productions from eight radio studios in seven cities across Germany were shown as part of the Jazzfest Berlin Radio Edition. Further concerts of this focus were shown on Sunday in the live stream of ARTE Concert. On the last day of the festival, Jazzfest Berlin presented the large-scale cooperation project “Rest Assured. Bodi No Be Fayawood” with SAVVY Contemporary with a total of fourteen artistic contributions in the silent green Kuppelhalle and in the premises of SAVVY Contemporary. The festival was concluded by musicians of the KIM Collective and other representatives of the Berlin improvisation scene with the commissioned work “De-Isolation”.
For reporting purposes, please note the updates on our website with changes in the programme or cast.
The Jazzfest Berlin 2021 will take place from 4 to 7 November under the direction of Nadin Deventer.
Media partners of the festival are ARTE Concert, the ARD radio stations and Deutschlandradio, the jazz station WBGO in the USA, The Wire, Monopol, Exberliner, Wall, Dussmann and the Yorck cinema group.
