Cologne Jazzweek: Sam Gendel Solo

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Sam Gendel, born in Visalia, California, in 1987 and raised in Los Angeles, grew up listening to the jazz of the pioneers—Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and John Coltrane were among them, as were Wayne Shorter and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Inspired by these musicians, he began learning the saxophone and carving out his own path in this originally African-American music.
In Los Angeles, Gendel came into contact with the producer Flying Lotus, through whom he found like-minded people who, like him, do not view jazz as a historically closed genre, but rather as an aesthetic stance for engaging with social and political issues. Whether performing with a band or solo, Gendel, as a multi-instrumentalist (playing not only saxophone but also keyboards, synthesizers, and guitar, plus various digital elements), makes “his” jazz sound unconventional: Sometimes he transforms jazz standards like “Satin Doll” or “In A Sentimental Mood” into a techno-inspired context; other times, he translates the digital soundscapes of 2000s hip-hop and R&B tracks into warm, analog tones.

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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.

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