Cologne Jazzweek: Peter Bernstein Quartet

Peter Bernstein (guitar) Sullivan Fortner (piano) Doug Weiss (bass) Kush Abadey (drums)

Tickets

Peter Bernstein, born in New York in 1967, is a guitarist who bridges the gap between jazz tradition and modernity. In 1990, his fellow instrumentalist Jim Hall invited the young jazz guitar student to join him on stage for a concert at the renowned JVC Jazz Festival in New York. Since then, Bernstein has appeared on approximately 300 albums as a guitarist, 14 of which he has released under his own name. As the leader of his own bands as well as a guest of musicians such as Lou Donaldson, Brad Mehldau, and Diana Krall, he has performed on many club, concert, and festival stages worldwide.
For some time now, his quartet—featuring pianist Sullivan Fortner, among others—has been the focus of his work. This quartet’s modern jazz style features a laid-back, straight-ahead swing, with the themes of the pieces serving as the foundation for an eloquently phrased, inventive art of improvisation. The interplay of the rhythm section sounds so harmonious and tight precisely to let the leader’s crystalline sound on the archtop jazz guitar shine and to provide an adequate foundation for his single-note lines.

Further information

Venue:

Stadtgarten

The first concert in the newly built Stadtgarten concert hall in the mid-1980s launched a program unlike anything Germany had seen: an independent, artistically driven concert series devoted to contemporary improvised music. It was guided neither by attendance figures nor by public subsidies, yet it guaranteed musicians minimum fees and was run on professional terms. The conditions mattered just as much: an acoustically optimized, street-level concert space offering a strong setting for audiences and performers alike. Operations were financed through the adjoining hospitality business, the Stadtgarten restaurant and beer garden, a model that drew attention well beyond Germany.

Today the Stadtgarten Köln ranks among Europe's internationally recognized venues for contemporary and improvised music. The American magazine Down Beat features it regularly in its listings; it has received Germany's federal APPLAUS venue program award several times, including "Venue of the Year" in 2016, followed by the German Jazz Prize in the same category in 2022. More than 400 events across the full spectrum of contemporary music now take place there each year. Its international standing rests above all on the high proportion of demanding, experimental programming.

A programming mission of this kind depends on reliable public support. The venue's 30th anniversary in September 2016 opened that prospect: through a partnership between the City of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, programming work is being substantially strengthened, and from 2017 onward the Stadtgarten Köln is being developed step by step into a "European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music" – with the goal of becoming one of Europe's leading music centers.

more info

More dates at Stadtgarten: