Since its foundation as the “Berliner Jazztage” in 1964, Jazzfest Berlin has been among Europe’s most renowned festivals of its kind, with innovation and political topics always part and parcel of its tradition. Following Richard Williams at the artistic helm for three years, curator Nadin Deventer takes on the artistic direction of Jazzfest Berlin from 2018 onwards.
Thomas Oberender, managing director of the Berliner Festspiele: “Nadin Deventer is a jazz expert with open antennas in all areas of contemporary music and the most diverse social milieus. She not only hears jazz, she lives it. As a trained jazz musician she has an unmistakable feel for quality and as a curator the urge to showcase jazz as a progressive art form – experimental, intelligent and politically engaged."
With her jazz music background, Nadin Deventer, who has been working for Jazzfest Berlin since 2013, as a curator and dramaturg was activ in various festival contexts, breaking up existing structures and creating new ones through new partnerships and formats. In addition to her talent in artistically and structurally anchoring a festival in situ, Nadin Deventer’s strengths include networking in an international context, a skill she was able to hone in her capacity on the Board of the “Europe Jazz Network”.
Nadin Deventer: “For me, jazz as improvisation music is lived diversity, a highly creative and free and open dialogue. In future I see the Jazzfest Berlin – with its very successful, over 50-year-old history – more strongly rooted as part of a global community, but anchored in the Berlin music and cultural landscape – with both elements strengthening Berlin as a jazz city.”
Nadin Deventer, born 1977, studied European studies and music in Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin. She has been active as a curator, dramaturg and project director in various contexts in the cultural arena and has left her mark on van Vlaanderen festival programs in Brussels and, following that, the jazz cultural landscape in the Ruhr district in particular. She worked at the Ruhrtriennale and in the team of Ruhr.2010, European Capital of Culture, for which she curated “No blah-blah!”, an international jazz program with 60 projects in more than 20 cities. For nine years (2007-2016), Nadin Deventer directed the “jazzwerkruhr”, a regional network and festival that she successively developed further with innovative projects into an international artists’ workshop and coproduction cell. In 2011, she carried out the 24- hours-run “What’s in the fridge?”, a bi-national cooperation project within the framework of the “Jazztopad Festival” in Wroclaw. As a member in the management team, she created the third edition of “festival n.a.t.u.r. – natürliche ästhetik trifft urbanen raum”, a platform situated between art, culture, actionism, urbanity and ecology. In 2012 she was appointed to the Board of the “Europe Jazz Network”.
Following Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1964-72), George Gruntz (1973-94), Albert Mangelsdorff (1995-2000), Nils Landgren (2001, 2008-11), John Corbett (2002), Peter Schulze (2003-07) und Bert Noglik (2012-14), British music journalist Richard Williams has held the artistic reins since 2015, and ends his three-year tenure with the 2017 edition.
Jazzfest Berlin: from 31 October to 5 November 2017.
