Music Archieven - POM Magazine

Jazz Montez- Jazz Jewel of Frankfurt

Thinking of Jazz? Then think of Frankfurt, specifically of Jazz Montez, the club housed in a building named Montez, situated close to the river Main. With concerts and its own record label, Jazz Montez offers Jazz music of today: new, contemporary and brilliant. In an interview with Giulia Weijerman, founder and director Lorenzo Dolce explains what makes this Jazz club so special. Interested in the music mentioned in this article?

by Giulia Weijerman

Lorenzo, how was your passion for Jazz music born?
I have been a saxophone player since I was 6 years old, and because there are many more saxophone players in Jazz than other genres, I listened a lot to Jazz music. When I was about 8 years old I switched to tenor sax and got interested in free Jazz like Albert Ayler or John Coltrane, and later in other styles of Jazz.

Did listening to Jazz made you decide to start Jazz Montez?
I have been organizing concerts since I was 14 years old. I looked for new stages, not in normal Jazz clubs of course, but in youth centres or other community centres. I always organized my own concerts, whether I played in them myself or not. Then one day I found this location here in Frankfurt, this building called Montez. It’s a big place, I think we have room for 400 people. It’s not a standard concert hall where musicians play on a stage high and above, far away from the audience. In Jazz Montez you can sit up close, almost on the stage. The place has art work everywhere and a lot of daylight. It adjoins a beautiful park, where people play basketball and football. Young people come in with their skateboard to buy a Coca Cola or something. It has a happy vibe.

Does Jazz Montez have a sense of community as well?
I get this question a lot. I think Jazz Montez is in some way a community. Since the start in 2016, we have been inviting musicians who are also our friends. They sometimes visit us 3 or 4 times a year to play here. We have residency programs where we invite people to come to Frankfurt and work with us on different music programs. So, frequent visitors will always recognize musicians because they have seen them before in Jazz Montez. I notice that people think it is important to have a community, but it doesn’t really affect us. Our goal is not building communities because that comes automatically with the music. You cannot create and play Jazz on your own. You need other people, musicians, organizers and audience, to achieve this.

Do you think the Frankfurt culture is reflected in Jazz Montez?
If you walk through Frankfurt you will notice that it is super multi-cultural. This mix of cultures is part of the Jazz Montez culture. It would not be possible to do what we are doing, if the people of Frankfurt were not open to our music. Jazz is also a music form that is open to any kind of instrument. It happens that a Turkish saz musician plays improvisations here in Jazz Montez, even though the musician doesn’t have a Jazz background. Frankfurt has an interesting history in Jazz music. During the Second World War there was a lot of Jazz in Frankfurt, even though Jazz was forbidden then. Frankfurt knows a lot of famous musicians like Albert Mangelsdorff and Emiel Mangelsdorff. They protested against the Nazis, they met and played here in Frankfurt, in hidden places. Then in the 50s and 60s the American military was based in Frankfurt. They listened to Jazz and brought their music to Frankfurt. The power of all this history is still in many of us here. It keeps us motivated to do what we do today, because Frankfurt has always been spectacular when it comes to Jazz.

Have you seen the Jazz movement change since Jazz Montez opened in 2016?
The worldwide number of people listing to Jazz is rising, with musicians going viral on social media and having a huge number of followers. I also notice that young people are mainly listening to UK Jazz at the moment. And for a couple of years now, a young American Jazz scene has been influencing European Jazz. So yes, I think the times are changing. Institutions like music schools, universities and festivals are managed by the older generation Jazz people. However, in the coming years young people will replace them. When I look at the young generation, their values and taste, I think a clash is about to come in the Jazz scene.

Maybe Jazz Montez can help somehow to avoid that?
I hope to connect the musicians in the best possible way, because the Jazz scene it is too small to fight each other. If someone is truly interested in documenting, teaming and programming Jazz then it doesn’t matter to which generation you belong. What’s important is the quality of work and what it means for the Jazz scene. I think that everybody should work together. Then the older generation will get what the new generation thinks is important. And the new generation will learn from what already happened, because the history of Jazz isn’t something young people should miss out.

Is there a performance or event that Jazz Montez hosted, that stands out as a defining moment?
Jazz Montez hosts every summer a program of open air concerts called Holidays. The concerts are free of charge and the musicians play in the park that is adjacent to Jazz Montez. People can sit on the outside stairs of the Montez building and the bands play in front of these stairs. There are parties, bars, nice food and inside there are art exhibitions. It’s a summer program that lasts for 7 weeks. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday there are 2 concerts of international, national or local bands. A lot of people visit these concerts, especially young people. Thousands of visitors come to dance and listen to the music without knowing upfront who is playing. I think that’s so interesting, these people don’t visit us just for the drinks. They are focused on the music. Holidays is a unique Jazz festival that I am very proud of.

Are there goals for Jazz Montez to realize in the coming years? Any plans you want to make happen?
Keep doing what we are doing right now is important. But not as much as doing the next interesting thing, that’s always our main goal. We will put more focus on our record label and produce more music. We have already invited a lot of good musicians to work this summer in our studio. As for our concerts, we recognize our position in the Jazz scene as the one that is there for the newcomers, and that will always be our goal.

Lorenzo, who is your favorite Jazz artist?
My personal favorite? Well, I really like the music of Norwegian saxophone player Mette Henriette. She plays atmospheric, minimalistic tenor saxophone music. She was in Jazz Montez last year and I loved her concert. She knows that, I told her at least 100 times. Another saxophone player whose music I really like is Chelsea Carmichael, she also played in Jazz Montez and I loved her concert. Jasmine Myra made an album I enjoy very much. She is from the UK and plays alto saxophone. But if I am only to have one favorite, well, difficult to choose, maybe Mette Henriette because I mentioned her first.

Robert Henke-The computer based artist

Last April, at the music festival Rewire 2022, Robert Henke played his work CBM 8032 AV, in a packed Royal Theatre in The Hague. On stage, there were five computers from the 1980’s. A large screen was hanging above the stage, displaying visual art and code that Henke used to start or stop music compositions on the computers. So, who is this man, who sits behind a desk on stage while typing on his keyboard? Did we hear the result of digital craftsmanship or does it take more to create that kind of music? Klaartje Til interviewed the ever friendly Robert Henke to find out the answers to these questions

By Klaartje Til

Mr. Henke, how would you define your art?
I am a computer based artist. It is a label that describes the main instrument that is at the core of my work: the computer. I don’t really know how to play a musical instrument and I can’t move a laser beam fast enough to draw visual laser art by hand. I need technology to create music, audiovisual art or visual art. The computer is the essential counterpart for my ideas.

What triggered or inspired you to get into computer based art, like electronic music?
If I have to point one singular piece of music that inspired me, it was the album “Oxygene” by Jean- Michel Jarre. It was released in the mid-seventies, and I was deeply impressed by the music. It opened an emotional engagement with sound, that I hadn’t experienced before. It made me realize that electronic music with synthesizers was, to a certain degree, within reach for me. I realized, that if I worked hard enough, I would be able to afford a synthesizer and I could try to make electronic music. So that was pretty much the starting point.

What role does coding play in the process of creating your music?
I have always used coding. It is a natural part of my artistic expression. I started with simple things. If I wanted to create a melody that only slightly changes every time you play it, I would build a system that involves some randomness. So after, for example, 3 notes, I might either move on to another 3 notes. Or I might move to a different direction and play a completely different set of notes. Then again, after 5 notes, I would make the decision to either repeat the first note and return to the second one, or stop. That is an example of a very simple system that can be run automatically and creates variations of a melody, while I can focus on something else. So the computer becomes my play partner. It starts to improvise, on top of which I can improvise. That is an example of how to use a computer to do something that is musically inspiring and helpful. When the software company Ableton started, the programming became more organized and a straight-forward process.

How did the company Ableton start?
I was born and raised in Munich, but decided to move to Berlin to study computer science. Against all odds, I met a person in Berlin who I already knew from Munich. He was a friend of a friend and I didn’t really like him. During one of the lectures at the university I saw this guy. We both looked at each other in disbelieve that of all the people, it had to be this person being there as well. Gerhard Behles and I became best friends. We started making music together and Gerhard became the driving force behind the founding of Ableton. The birth of Ableton was based on the fact that we knew that something was missing, some sort of tool. We were quite certain that among the people who make electronic music, there would be enough interest for such a tool. Enough to found a small company. That is how Ableton was born.

What did Ableton have to offer that was missing back then?
In the 80’s and 90’s, the main role the computer played in making music was the role of a recorder. This meant that you still had to play an instrument in order to make music with a computer. We don’t know how to play an instrument, and we didn’t need to because computers can do this better than we could ever do. We built a system that allowed people to interact with the computer in a playful manner. That concept of real-time interaction with software to create music did not exist in a commercial product, the way we did it. Now it is a standard feature that a lot of other software products offer. But the initial idea that something like this could work, came from us, from Ableton. I still work for Ableton and I am still part of the company. I have no intention to ever quit, because it is also the product of my imagination. So much of ‘me’ can be found in the software.

What role does the city of Berlin play in your artistic life?
I was lucky to move to Berlin in 1990, right after the fall of the Berlin wall. There was this fantastic void in the city. Life in Berlin was incredibly cheap and there were empty spaces everywhere. A lot of people used the opportunity to become creative and I was part of that scene. The scene in Berlin was very small and I got in touch with a record label that was looking for new artists. So I didn’t need to do much to get my first record out. That is how I became an electronic music producer. It just happened very naturally, by being the right person at the right time, in the right place.

How did your creative work evolve from coding behind a desk, to live performing?
A lot of music was actually created during concerts. We always record our live performances and the best stuff ends up on records. So performing and releasing music have always been one and the same to us. What did change over time were the visuals shown during the performance. I started to create the visuals for my performances myself. I wasn’t very happy with the visuals that VJ’s created during my shows. Most of the time they had nothing to do with my music and it simply didn’t fit. I decided to write my own little video generator, to have something running in the background. But soon I realized that I reached my limits, so I moved away from doing my own visuals.

Why did you reach your limits, you think?
At the time, there were a few people who did really amazing stuff. It was clear to me that I couldn’t reach their level. I thought it would be pointless to try to compete with them and I gave up. I returned to visual arts via a backdoor, when I was asked by a small gallery to do an installation and came up with the idea to do something with laser. This was about 14 years ago, when there were only a few artists who worked with laser in a way that I found interesting. It was unchartered territory where I could make an impact and do something that people hadn’t seen before.

Is that your main goal, to show people something they haven’t seen before?
I wouldn’t say that it is my goal and on the larger scale of things it is impossible to show something that hasn’t been seen before. But even though my work is not unique at first glance, it has its own qualities. It has depth, it has details and complexity. It is rewarding to experience my work multiple times because there are so many details to discover. It is rich. What I do is always rich. As far as my laser-work is concerned, I have the feeling that a lot of people who work with laser nowadays, are at least to some degree also influenced by what I have done. Because I often see things that remind me of stuff I did 10 years ago.

So you are the inventor of the kind of work you do?
In science and art, the question of who is first with something is always difficult to answer. Ideas never fall from the sky, they are connected to cultural backdrop and social environment. So it is not uncommon in science and art, that similar ideas pop-up at completely different places and at almost the same time.

Do you consider yourself a scientist as well?
I know enough about science to understand how far away I am from what makes a good scientist. But, like artists, a good scientist must have imagination to discover things that are not clear yet. In order to come up with a new theory about how things work, a scientist needs to be bold and needs to question the existing conditions. For engineers it is even more obvious, because they build something that has a function. If something has a function, it also consists of physical objects that need to be arranged in a physical space. There are multiple options to arrange the objects and design can help you to discover these options. I come from a family of engineers and the biggest liberation from my family background was that I understood that engineering is art. My family didn’t make the connection between engineering and art, but once I understood it is the same way of thinking, I felt liberated to do whatever I wanted to do.

This realization that engineering and art have a lot in common, how does it reflect in your creative process?
My work is a combination of logic and intuition. Most of the things I do require programming, which means that I have to solve problems in an abstract way. A lot of strict engineering thinking is involved, but ultimately the result is sound or graphics, or both. However, the best code doesn’t guarantee that the end result has an emotional impact. Technically it may be doing exactly what I was hoping it would do, but artistically it just isn’t interesting. In those cases, I add something that I don’t consider very important technically, and suddenly the magic is there. I find it fascinating that I can use technology to create something that transcends from a machine into something emotional and magic.

You use old-school monitors as well in some of your performances. Why do you work with these old-school computers?
Those computers are from 1980. They are insanely limited and working with them is very tedious, but it also means I have to think before I work. I cannot just program something and see what comes out. It brings a completely different focus and that’s why I like to work with these computers. The whole notion of art is that there is always a balance between the known and the unknown. If I use these old computers to create something that feels contemporary, then I have this nice juxtaposition between glitch electronic art from this millennium, and technology that is cute, tangible and outdated. This combination is very interesting.

Are you planning on doing something similar in the future?
Well, I am still working on this old project with the old computers. It is an ongoing project. I am still creating new sounds and new video material. I am touring with it as much as possible. It is a challenge to get these large, heavy old computers on tour, because they are fragile and expensive to bring along. But they are part of my live repertoire that people can book. So if you want to have the show and you have the money and the space, you can contact me and I can say: ‘Let’s go, let’s do it!

DJ Coco Maria

DJ Coco Maria was born and raised in Mexico. Today she lives in Amsterdam from where she broadcasts her radio show, Breakfast Club Coco. With her sparkling music taste she attracts fans from all over the word. For POM Magazine, Anke Verbeek talked with Coco Maria about live radio, festivals and bubbles.

By Anke Verbeek

You have your own radio show on World Wide FM and you do DJ gigs on international festivals. What music do you play in your radio show and on festivals?
My music style focuses on Latin America, South America, soul music and jazz. Anything that is danceable and feels like summer. Sometimes I divert from this musical path and play, for example, French or Japanese music. So mixing different styles. I love it when people like what I play. It means that the music not only touches me, but touches them too. When I play, I imagine a bubble. People who are interested in the music enter this imaginary bubble where we are together and feel the music vibe. That’s what I like.

Your radio show, Breakfast Club Coco, has listeners all over the world. How do you connect with the vibe of this world wide bubble?
The show has a chat. While I am broadcasting, listeners send chats to the show. It is live with an immediate reaction to what I say and play. Sometimes I play a song someone suggests during the show, because it fits better than the one I had planned to play. It’s a breakfast show with a casual vibe. I don’t start the show with dance music but my selection is always bright. The show ends with music that has a happy high vibration.

You are not like the average DJ who plays hits. Most of what I hear on your show I have never heard before. How do you source the music?
Researching and looking for music is part of the job. I used to play only vinyl. So I went to a lot of record stores and played what I found there. But during the Covid lock-down the record stores were closed and I started to search on internet sites like Bandcamp. I get promos from artists and exchange music with friends who are DJs. My boyfriend is also a DJ and together we have a lot of records. It’s not a crazy large number of records because I sell the ones I don’t like anymore or give them to friends. I love the idea that I only have records that I like. When it comes to my collection, it is not about the quantity but quality.

Who inspires you?
I have friends whose authentic approach to music inspires me. It is easy to get lost in things that are not about music itself, like image or networking. These friends remind me that it’s about the music. A few DJs inspire me like Gilles Peterson. He is the founder of World Wide FM and he organises festivals. I love playing at these festivals. At the moment I am really into DJ Sheila B. She has a weekly show on WFMU. It’s a station based in New Jersey. Sheila stopped social media two years ago, and started a regular newsletter with interesting information and interesting links. In her shows she only plays music made or performed by women, mainly Indie, Rock and Punk. I like her style and her approach. It’s not about her, it’s all about the music.

Is your DJ work for Breakfast Club Coco different from your DJ gigs at festivals?
On the radio show there is not the pressure to make people dance. There is more time to introduce a song. I don’t have to keep up a certain tempo, just to keep up the vibes. I can explore more and move in any musical direction. That makes it more personal.

You play at a lot of festivals. What are the ingredients that make a good party?
The basics must be right, like the lighting, the space and the sound. When you have that covered you need a certain number of people. It is difficult to have a good party, when there are not enough people or when it’s too crowded. The best parties are the ones where people are really on it. They dance and go for it. There is this excitement about what’s coming. I touch them with the music I play, they respond with dancing, cheering and clapping. I notice that people gradually focus less on me, when it’s a good party. That’s why I don’t like playing in DJ booths that are on a high stage. People focus more on their own thing when I am on the same level as the crowd. There is a festival in Spain, Wakana Reunion, that has the best DJ booth I have ever played in. The festival is in a forest. The booth is on the ground floor, in the shape of a triangle, and surrounded by people. The interaction is beautiful.

What do you think is the difference between local FM and World Wide FM?
Most stations on local FM don’t go so deep. World Wide FM shows go deep with the music that they focus on. I think it’s the best station I have ever bumped into. It has a nice community. The DJs are serious collectors and they really know what they are doing. They come from all over the world. It’s not a commercial station so we are free to play what we like. People who are thirsty for music will always find something new on this station.

Are your radio shows completely live? Or is it press & play?
The show is always live. If I can’t do the show someone replaces me, so it is always live. But to prepare the show I make an upfront selection. I prepare notes if I want to tell something specific about a record. I tried once without a preselection. The show was chaotic. I was busy finding the records instead of feeling relaxed and going with the flow.

What do you like about the live aspect of your show?
I love the experience that comes with a live show. I feel like a proper host. I welcome the listeners, I receive their chats to which I react immediately, live in the show. I notice in the chats that people want to tune in because it’s live. Not only for the music but also for the interaction, the warmth and the feeling that we all come together. Especially during the Covid lock-down people appreciated this more than ever, the feeling of being part of a community. That’s why people want the show to be live, to be able to interact with each other.