Text von Manfred Papst, Bilder von Henry Schulz

CORE FUSION OF SWING AND TECHNO

The "Jazzrausch Bigband" from Munich has been one of the most fascinating acts at the Festival da Jazz for years. High time for a chat with its founder and leader, trombonist Roman Sladek.

Did you also perform at other venues back then?

In addition to the Harry Klein engagement, we also had a swing programme at a nearby indie rock club, which was about two hundred metres away. We played in rotation, one week there, the other week there. As a result, our audience grew quite quickly. After a year or two, we then started to perform our programmes outside of Munich, and in the city itself we played bigger and bigger venues, such as the Isar-Philharmonie, the Muffathalle and most recently the Kleine Olympiahalle.

What does it look like today?

We now play more on tour than in Munich. We give around 100 concerts a year. That's a lot for a big band, especially as we don't go on tour in blocks, but perform once or twice a week. However, it's important to me that the members are also involved in other activities so that they can keep giving the big band new impetus and we don't become blinded by our work.

Have there been many changes in the line-up over the years?

The fluctuation has remained manageable. A number of founding members are still with us. Overall, the band has grown. We started with 18 people, now we have 35. Every position is filled twice, the members rotate in a coordinated manner so that a slightly different line-up plays at every concert. Continuity is important, but so is variety. In our system, everyone still plays several times a month and therefore stays in good shape.

How long were you at the Harry Klein techno club?

For seven years. Then, unfortunately, it also had to close because a hotel is now being built there. But fate has been kind to us: the Bergson Kunstkraftwerk is currently being built in Munich, our new residency, where I am also Managing Director and Artistic Director. This is a large cultural and event centre with a beer garden, a former boiler hall that is a listed building, various cabaret stages and an ultra-modern concert hall that is particularly suitable for electro-acoustically amplified music.

Is developing the programmes for the Jazzrausch Big Band essentially your job?

I design the concepts in the first instance, yes. Sometimes I orientate myself on spaces, sometimes on themes or people. For example, I developed a hybrid headphone concert for a church in Munich. The Jazzrausch big band was placed in the galleries around the audience, who listened to the bass and percussion via wireless semi-open headphones, while the other instruments and the organ were added from outside. Or another example: for the aforementioned Kesselhalle in the Bergson Kunstkraftwerk, I conceived ‘Bergson's Rise’, a concert in which the audience moves around a lot in the huge space. The music is then composed and arranged by Leonhard Kuhn, the sound concept and sound design is created by Josy Friebel, and the lighting and stage design comes from Philip Foidl.

Where are the interfaces between Leonhard Kuhn and you?

I explain my concept to him and then he composes and arranges the music completely independently. I don't talk him into it. He then sends the compositions back to the band and together we think about how we can realise them, always in collaboration with the aforementioned lighting and sound designers and visual artists.

Although your productions are complex total works of art, they do not appear monumental and static, but very dynamic. How do you manage that?

We strive to maintain the creative tension between composition and improvisation. Spontaneity plays a central role for us. None of our pieces can do without solos. A large ensemble must function like a complex machine in certain passages, where each part fulfils its task, but it also needs the freedom for individual development. Leonhard Kuhn describes the passages for the solos, but they are not rigid. Depending on the situation, you can give them more or less space. If someone is just taking off incredibly, you shouldn't slow them down.

‘WE HAVE AROUND FORTY PROGRAMMES UP OUR SLEEVES AND NEVER PLAY THE SAME CONCERT TWICE. THAT'S WHY IT ALWAYS CRACKLES.’

So are you a big band made up of individualists?

Absolutely! By no means do we want to be an orchestra in which everyone is dressed the same and only carries out the orders of one person, but rather a team that plays together, but in which individual performances are also required.

Jazzrausch Bigband

Trombonist, bandleader and music manager Roman Sladek (*1989 in Roth near Nuremberg) grew up in Lower Bavaria. He studied classical trombone, jazz trombone and cultural and music management in Munich. In 2014, he founded the Jazzrausch Bigband, which has released twelve albums to date and gives around one hundred concerts a year. The Slatec quintet is a subset of the Jazzrausch Bigband, which now consists of 35 musicians. Their home base is the Bergson Kunstkraftwerk in Munich, where Roman Sladek has been Artistic Director since 2022.

How big is your repertoire?

We now have around forty different concert programmes and a correspondingly gigantic number of individual pieces up our sleeves. The programmes change again and again. We never actually play the same concert twice. That's why it always crackles.

As a large formation, do you have a permanent crew to assist you?

No! We have divided this work among ourselves. Practically everyone who is on stage has organisational tasks in addition to their role as performing musicians. For example, they look after the sheet music archive or merchandising. We also don't have roadies with us to set up and dismantle our equipment. We all lend a hand.

And I think you can feel that in the concert. What are the considerations behind this concept?

I am convinced that the entire music industry is pseudo-mystified. Many jobs are given up by musicians with the justification: ‘It's not my thing.’ But the real reason is laziness. And that leads to the fact that you become more and more incapacitated, that you become more and more dependent on others, on people who ultimately stand between the artist and the audience.

For example, do you fundamentally reject working with agencies?

No, not at all. But it must be a partnership of equals. You can't allow yourself to be controlled by others. And it doesn't hurt any musician to know what has to be done before a ticket is sold. After all, we want to make a living from music, so we should know the economic mechanisms that make this possible.

How important is public cultural funding for you?

A rather small one. Of course, there is indirect support that you don't even realise as such, for example when you perform in venues whose infrastructure is funded by the state. But what we receive directly as Jazzrausch Bigband is in the single-digit percentage range of our budget.

Does that bother you?

It rather fulfils me with satisfaction. My aim is neither to make music that is as complex as possible for as few people as possible, nor to play music that is as simple as possible in front of as many people as possible. These concepts both seem boring to me. Mere self-promotion is as cheap as pure commerce.

What do you mean?

The question is much more exciting: how can I reach many people with complex music? To do this, I have to think about the mediation. If I assume, for example, that I want to have a big band with top musicians to whom I pay a decent fee, I quickly come to the conclusion that 160 tickets sold are not enough. It has to be 1200. You have to get there. And that's where the strange paradoxes of cultural funding come into play. In order to receive certain funds, I would have to prove that I don't reach a significant audience.

How do you feel about travelling to St. Moritz this year?

The Jazzrausch Bigband loves the Festival da Jazz. A great deal of trust has grown over the years. We have had the honour of playing at various venues there. Highlights for us are always the concerts in the Sunny Bar, where we have also made contact with the local audience. Many people come up to us and say: ‘This is the fifth time I've heard you here.’ And we do everything we can to make sure they add: ‘And it was different every time.’

What music did you actually grow up with?

As a teenager, I was socialised mainly through my father with rock and jazz rock, and I was also enthusiastic about metal, especially in its technically demanding, fast forms. But I also have a classical background, I had piano lessons early on, even before I decided to play the trombone, and then I also went to a grammar school for the arts. Jazz also played a role back then. I gradually transformed the school bands I had from metal to blues-rock-jazz ensembles. I was fascinated by everything that was somehow complex, unusual and challenging.

Published in NZZ Sunday, June Sonntag vom 2. Juni 2024

So does the name of the band come from this club?

That's right. Our first, strongly conceptualised concert series was called ‘Jazzrausch’, and that's how we became the Jazzrausch Bigband. I wanted to have an artistic tool that had a fixed location and basically a constant line-up, but whose programme was always changing. The club was always packed when we played. Unfortunately, it had to close after about two years because there were complaints from neighbours about disturbances at night. The club was in the middle of the city centre. We then moved on to the Harry Klein techno club. It was always important to me to have a fixed base and not to be travelling from place to place.

"OUR FIRST, STRONGLY CONCEPTUALISED CONCERT SERIES WAS CALLED ‘JAZZRAUSCH’, AND THAT'S HOW WE BECAME THE JAZZRAUSCH BIGBAND."

A big band playing mainly on acoustic instruments and intoning themes ranging from Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler to Count Basie and film music in a techno club: how can that work?

Interestingly, it worked right from the start. I thought to myself: what takes place in a hip setting might also be perceived as hip in terms of content. Our 2015 debut album ‘Prague Calling’, which also played with electronic music and technoid influences, was certainly a starting point.

So in a way, you came to the Harry Klein techno club on a Trojan horse.

If you like! The people in charge thought our idea was unusual, but were prepared to try it out. ‘If it doesn't work, you're out,’ they said, ’but if it works, we can expand.’ That was actually beneficial for us because we knew that we had to give it our all right from the start. In a way, it was about a core fusion of jazz and techno, not just a dalliance, a do-as-if.

NZZ am Sonntag: Roman Sladek, the Jazzrausch Big Band has developed into an internationally successful large-scale formation in recent years, performing around 100 concerts a year. How did it all begin?