Jazzwerkstatt Bern stands as a space devoted to social negotiation processes, enabling the breakdown of logics of compartmentalisation as well as musical categories such as “jazz”, and practicing a more inclusive music culture. The festival focuses on collective programming with a curatorial board that changes annually. In collaboration with our guest artists and curators, we develop formats that combine art and discourse, such as the ‘Burning Questions’ format. Together, we continuously create participatory moments that dissolve the boundaries between the stage and the audience.
OUR VALUES
We attach great importance to becoming a festival that reflects a diverse society on both sides of the stage. Adopting an attitude of awareness towards human diversity, we are regulargly compelled to reflect on our practices and to adapt them. As musicians, we value the unfamiliar, the unheard, and the unexpected. We are committed to treating everyone involved in the festival with humanity, care and an open mind. In doing so, we practise constructive dialogue. We are committed to the careful use of creative and ecological resources.
OUR HISTORY
It all began with a small delegation of young musicians from Bern and Lausanne who had moved to Vienna in 2007 and who had, in record time, brought a 16-piece ensemble to stage readiness with the young and wild members of the local jazz scene.
A music festival sprang to life, perpetually crowded over 24 nights, where dubious drinks were served and composers barely in their teens were taking up the quill. The idea was to develop the music of young musicians away from established clubs and festivals and then to get it heard – The Jazzwerkstatt Wien was a resounding success.
Enthused by this experience, three of the Swiss visitors founded the Jazzwerkstatt Bern.
So in 2008 in Bern’s Matte district, musicians from Bern and Vienna shared the stage of an arthouse cinema that was bursting at the seams in an ‘EM Duell’, a singer gave her first solo show who is well established in the meantime, and a by now very seasoned brass section played for the first time as condensation was dripping from the ceiling. The festival moved to the PROGR cultural center the following year for more space, where it remains to this day.
Nowadays we are delighted to say that the Jazzwerkstatt has blossomed into an international festival and become an integral part of the Swiss music scene. A playground for music that refuses to be pigeonholed.