September 2026 ~ The Free Jazz Collective

August 14 - 16, 2026, Peitz, Germany

Up a creaky set of wooden stairs to the lofts of the 1810 Huettenwerk of the historic Ironworks and Fishery Museum of Peitz, an imposing building full of old heavy tools for the iron foundry and fishing works in the surrounding carp ponds, is an exhibition on Free Jazz in the German Democratic Republic (former East Germany). It’s a traveling show, having accompanied Jazzwerkstatt concerts and festivals over the years. The first time I encountered it, at a Globe Unity Orchestra concert in Potsdam in 2014, it prompted me to dig for all of the Amiga Jazz records that I could find, leading to likely the most complete collection of East German jazz in New Jersey.

Every year for the past ten years or so that I’ve been to the festival, I find myself drawn to the exhibition, like a pilgrim to worship. Each station of the exhibit offers a glimpse into this well documented but still mythical past, with a final station showcasing the Peitz Festival. Created in 1973 by two young free-thinking music fans, Uli Blobel and Peter “Jimi” Metag, both from the small East German town of Peitz, the festival drew other like minded youth to hear both East German musicians like Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and Conny Bauer as well as West German musicians like Alexander von Schlippenbach and other musicians from the other side of the Iron Curtain such as Barry Guy and Wadada Leo Smith.

The names are many and the history can be read in the “Woodstock am Karpfenteich’ books as well as experienced here, and the story is a good one. Lasting until shut down by the government in 1982 and restarted by Blobel in 2011 under much different conditions, the Jazzwerkstatt Peitz festival of 2026 still draws some of those who trekked by train and Trabi to the original, but is also working to draw in a new audience whose connection to the past is being built by heading to upper floors via creaky wooden stairs.

Starting in 2024, Marie Blobel, the daughter of Uli Blobel, took over. Some of the changes Marie Blobel made included moving the festival from the center of Peitz to the grounds of the fishing museum amidst the carp ponds and injecting a festive flair into the weekend long event. With a packed schedule of concerts and a two kilometer hike to the Doener restaurant, festival goers are oriented to the wurst stand, the home cooked vegetarian dishes at the beer tent and the biergarten around the corner. Kids have the chance to make their own music with an imaginative looping station and everyone can climb aboard the “Karpfenbummler,” an electric miniature train that will take you in style from the festival to town to the train station. Coming into its own it the new form, Jazzwerkstatt Peitz was awarded the Deutsche Jazzpreis this past year.

Gebhard Ullman’s Hemisphere 4 PLUS (biergarten stage)

The concerts began on Friday evening with the folk-meets-modern-jazz sounds of Trio Ivoire. In the trio's music, Hans Lüdemann’s piano and electronics and Christian Thomé's percussion and electronics are met with the organic tones of Aly Keïta’s balafon, an African instrument described as a “a gourd-resonated xylophone.” The music is upbeat and highly syncopated and thus quickly had some of the at-capacity audience on their feet swaying to their rhythms. As soon as the set ended, the audience began shuffling off, around the museum and cycler hostel (the Gurkenradweg - yes, the Pickle Bikepath - passes by the festival grounds), to a biergarten, where a stage has been set up under a lush copse of trees. Woodwindist Gebhard Ullman’s newest formation, Hemisphere 4 PLUS, featuring a mix of his current electric and acoustic groups, began with a chamber-jazz like combination of Anna Viechtl’s harp and Taiko Saito’s vibraphone. Disrupted by a crash of percussion, the group tumbled into a pulsating groove. Describing the music as “sculptures,” Ullmann led the group through an alluring mix of the delicate (add Silke Lange accordion to the chamber jazz components), hard-hitting (with Eric Schaefer on drums and Oliver Potratz on bass) and other-worldly (Liz Kosack’s keyboard and synthesizer).

OM (main stage)

A short shuffle back to the main stage where OM, the legendary avant-jazz-rock group, were ready to go. The original group members, saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran and bassist Bobby Burri were joined by drummer’s Gerry Hemingway and Tony Buck who have replaced the late Fredy Studer, as they did on the recent Intakt release Suedpol. After a short freely improvised intro from Leimgruber, a blast of rock energy from Doran gave root to a swirling squall of tones and the music slowly evolved into a groove led by the two percussionists. Moments of electric Miles colored the rich panoply of sound which ranged from deeply experimental to outright rock. An excellent set.

Closing out the main stage for the evening was the quartet Selvhenter from Copenhagen. Saxophonist Sonja LaBianca and trombonist Maria Bertel and drummers Anja Jacobsen and Jaleh Negari crafted a dark, throbbing techno-jazz designed to get festival goers on their feet. It was quite late by the time the quartet’s final notes faded, but the show wasn’t over … yet, as drummer Willi Kellers and organizer Wolfgang ‘Assi’ Gloede were hosting a jam session in the cozy workshop building behind the main stage. Amongst painted fish sculptures and some serious looking tools, saxophonist Lotte Anker, keyboardist Liz Kosack and bassist Reza Askari joined Kellers in free-jazz improvisation that began with electronic percolations and slowly crescendoing notes that eventually balled into an exciting and thorny tumbleweed of sound. Following the opener, Gloede curated combinations of professional and hobbyist musicians who improvised into the wee hours.

Wanja Slavin (sitting far right) (church)

Saturday’s full schedule began in the town church where saxophonist and festival Improviser-in-Residence Wanja Slavin, last year’s winner of the Brandenburg Jazzpreis - an award developed by Jazzwerkstatt and the state of Brandenburg - debuted a new composition with a band comprised of Peter Evans on trumpet, Leonard Huhn on bass clarinet, Almut Kühne with vocals and Kaja Draksler on piano. The rich 45-minute piece moved seamlessly between moods and approaches as darker moments were balanced by more hopeful passages. Repetitive arpeggios and prominent electronics formed a consistent tonal base accentuated by the dissonant church organ and several outstanding solos.

A short while later back at the festival grounds, percussionist and singer Mariá Portugal’s EROSÃO septet took the stage in the rapidly heating up early afternoon. The music began with a brass fanfare as the group walked-on the stage and transitioned to Portugal singing over polyrhythmic accompaniment. Concentrated on a repertoire of songs that drew heavily on her Brazilian background, Portugal’s vocals took center stage, while the high-powered group of saxophonists Lotte Anker and Angelika Niescier, trombonists Matthias Müller and Moritz Wesp, tubist Carl Ludwig Hübsch and bassist Reza Askari provided solid support. Afterwards in the Huettenwerk building, the duo of Mohammad Mostafa Heydarian and Valentin Portron, performing on the traditional Iranian tanbur and bendir - a stringed instrument and hand drum - continued the expansion of the festival’s musical purview.

Impro-Concert: Tony Buck, Matthias Mueller, Taito Saito (workshop)

Two improvisation sessions, tucked away in the workshop building, injected a bit of the unexpected into the afternoon. The first introduced the British woodwindist Tamar Osborn with the American bassist Nick Dunston and drummer Gerry Hemingway. This first meeting proved fruitful. Clicking quickly, Osborn leaned into the deeper registers of her baritone sax, while Hemingway contributed a lithe, but full, pulse and Dunbar provided a melodically swinging bridge between the two. The later improvisation session joined three Berlin based improvisors who have been in each other’s orbits but never played together before. Vibraphonist Taiko Saito, trombonist Matthias Müller and drummer Tony Buck played a set ranging from contemplative to combustive.

Aki Takase, Robert Landfermann, Christian Lillinger. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

The mid-afternoon offered both unforgiving sun and an excellent set from pianist Aki Takase who was performing her upbeat, complex, and often humor-laced music with drummer Christian Lillinger and bassist Robert Landfermann on the main stage. The trio’s music is impressive, Lillinger, with his agitated, driving approach is a perfect rhythmic partner for Takase’s own intensity, and Landfermann’s rhythmic and melodic playing adds a nicely fitting layer. Nearing the end of the set, a dramatic moment ensured when Takase suddenly collapsed from the heat. Fortunately, it was reported that the pianist was already on the move to the next concert in Austria that evening.

Darius Jones & Otomo Yoshihide Quartet. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

A little later the shows were back in the biergarten, where the trees provided some relief from the 100 degree heat, and the Czech quartet Edemit added a jolt of avant-rock to the day while Neiscer and Portugal picked up in a duo form the earlier set. As the day began to cool, the action moved back on the main stage where Darius Jones and Otomo Yoshihide (alto saxophone and guitar, respectively) augmented by bassist Nick Dunston and drummers Gerald Cleaver and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki provided an electric set. Following a rousing Coltrane-like introduction, the rhythm section gave Jones a rumbling foundation for his soaring melody to which Yoshihide responded with a feedback-laden solo, pushing the music to an early peak. The music ebbed and flowed, from dark atmospheric wanderings to high-energy free-jazz explosions over pulsating rhythms. Afterwards, the UK-based Ill Considered featuring Tamar Osborn (Idris Rahman on saxophone, Liran Donin on bass, Emre Ramazanoglu on drums and Osborn with various woodwinds) closed out the night with a set heavy on beats and Middle Eastern-tinged scales. The set ended with about half the remaining audience dancing in front of the stage.

Perhaps in normal times, it would have been a disappointment but after the previous day’s oven-like disposition, the cool, rain-soaked grey morning greeting festival goers on Sunday was welcome. A church service in the Huettenwerk started the day for the faithful while out on the festival yard, the others were huddling under the drink stand tents sipping coffee while the bratwurst man started up his grill.

First musical act, Richard Koch’s Ray of Light was the only one to be seen under the steadily raining sky. They began with the trumpeter playing a regal anthem and launching into a cheery, melodic tune filled with the folkish sounds of Fabiana Striffler’s violin and Valentin Butt’s accordion along with the rhythm support of Andreas Lang’s bass and Nora Thiele’s frame drums. The “gute laune” (good mood) music with its blend of up-tempo jazz, classical and folk elements provided a lighthearted start to another long day of music. Their timing was perfect too, as Ray of Light reached the end of their set, the first beams of sun reached the festival grounds.

Have You Ever Been Experienced. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

The opening set was followed by Brandenburg Jazzpreis. Prize winner, guitarist Andreas Willers, who was to present his Hendrix inspired group Have You Ever Been Experienced, featuring a top-notch group of Berlin based musicians: Amy Green on vocals, Rieko Okuda on piano, Jan Roder on bass and Christian Marien on drums, was unfortunately too ill to attend. Despite this, the group, still gave a rousing performance, taking well-worn Hendrix themes and spinning them anew. Okuda took over the guitar solos with a distorted synthesizer, while Roder and Marien made sure the foundations were securely fortified. Most revelatory were Green’s vocals, which retained enough of the melody for song-recognition and enough improvisational liberty to free them from nostalgic interpretation -- for example, an updated interpretation of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl set to a free-jazz take of ‘If 6 was 9.’

The final two sets of the festival moved back into town to the church. The first was the Polish duo of vocalist Maniucha Bikont and bassist Ksawery Wójciński performing a set of haunting folksongs. Discovered through Bikont’s musicology research, the songs came from a disappearing tribe in the Ukraine, with themes that touched on the universal: suffering, responsibility and expecting better manners from the dead. Performed solely with voice and bass, the music filled the church mesmerizingly.

Konradism. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

The closing set to the festival may have also been one of the most anticipated. Connecting the festival’s eras, trombonist and archetype of the original Peitz festival and East German free-jazz in general, trombonist Conny Bauer presented the large group Konradisms with an extended composition of “chamber big-band” that mixed generous improvisation and dramatic riffs. Joining Bauer was a cross section of a younger generation of German-based musicians: Nils Wogram on trombone, Maxine Troglauer also on bass trombone, Gerhard Gschlössl on tuba, Claudio Puntin on bass clarinet, Maria Reich on violin, Emily Wittbrodt on cello, Matthias Bauer on bass, Dag Magnus Narvesen on drums and Rieko Okuda on piano. Often breaking into small combos - trombone and piano, tuba and violin - the solos would grow intense and eventually congeal around common themes. A stand out was Puntin whose bass clarinet playing ranged from the sound of a flute to deep, woody resonance.

After an intense two and half days of music, the two last concerts were a satisfying and full-circle-moment ending to the festival. Overall, one could sense a tilt towards the new - nights that ended with experimental but danceable music, a series of risky but successful workshop concerts with musicians meeting for the first time, an infusion of world-music elements, and a loosening, but not denying, deference to the past, showing a way forward.

More about the Peitz festival: