Paul Heller invites Swing Masters Vol. 2

Axel Schlosser (trumpet) Fiete Felsch (alto saxophone) Dan Gottshall (trombone, vocals) Paul Heller (tenor saxophone) Thilo Wagner (piano) Ingmar Heller (bass) Jörg Achim Keller (drums)

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Some concerts are so good that you would like to hear them again. Which is not exactly easy, especially if there is no live recording. As a rule, the members of an exclusively assembled ensemble go their separate ways after a memorable performance, and what remains is the memory of an event that cannot be repeated. Or perhaps it is? After a sold-out concert in Cologne's Stadtgarten in March 2025, Paul Heller has invited the "Swing Masters" back, giving you the wonderful opportunity to experience their passionately grooving jazz once again - or even for the first time! Axel Schlosser, Dan Gottshall, Fiete Felsch and Paul Heller are all experienced big band protagonists, playing with the no less accomplished rhythm section Thilo Wagner, Ingmar Heller and Jörg Achim Keller, the latter one of the most sought-after arrangers for large ensembles. This "Volume 2" concert will certainly not be a blueprint of the first Summit. To say it expectantly with Bert Brecht: "Because things are as they are, things will not stay as they are."

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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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