David Amram & Band live at Jazzkeller Frankfurt
On view is David Amram with his band
Concert for the 90th birthday of David Amram
Sun, October 17, 2021 8 pm CEST
Jazzkeller Frankfurt

The Jazzkeller Frankfurt celebrates David Amram's 90th birthday and the ZKM celebrates with him.

it is now 65 years since David Amram last descended the stairs to Frankfurt's legendary Jazzkeller. Arriving in Germany as a French horn player in the American military orchestra, Amram found himself in prominent company there in the 1950s with jazz greats such as Albert and Emil Mangelsdorff and Attila Zoller. Not only did he introduce the French horn and his penny-whistles to jazz. David Amram's life spans a wide arc from Frankfurt's Jazzkeller to the New York Philharmonic and Hollywood. Amram has already been a guest at the ZKM in Karlsruhe four times. We could experience him as a composer and conductor of the KIT Orchestra or as the inventor of jazz poetry with Allen Ginsberg. We shed a tear of joy at his GLOBALE performance in Karlsruhe's Schlosspark to his »Wonderful World« version and grooved with him to jazz and world music in the ZKM cube.

With the concert in the Jazzkeller, the ZKM fulfills a special wish of the artist. The band that has always accompanied him at his performances at the ZKM and in Karlsruhe will largely be on stage with him. Drums icon Erwin Ditzner, trumpet whiz Thomas Siffling and string virtuoso Matthias Ockert were always present at David Amram's live performances. With Andreas »Mini« Schulz on bass, another great joins the band, who has also been on stage with the likes of Laurie Andersons or Lou Reed.

With this concert in the intimate setting of Frankfurt's Jazzkeller, the ZKM takes a bow to a great artist. David Amram already celebrated his 90th birthday in November 2020. Corona cancelled the joint plans at that time, now David Amram's return is firmly in sight. A few days after the concert in Frankfurt, he will return to the ZKM. On Wednesday, 20.10.2021, the film »Splendor in the Grass« by director Elia Kazan can be seen at 7 pm. David Amram wrote the music for this Hollywood classic. You can also look forward to a lively talk with David Amram, manager, producer and filmmaker Doug Yeager and ZKM board member Peter Weibel afterwards.

To the ticket presale
You can see Thomas Siffling playing his trumpet
Thomas Siffling

Thomas Siffling is considered one of the most established and successful jazz musicians of his generation in the German-speaking world. Renowned with numerous awards such as the Jazz Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg and celebrated as a pioneer of a new German jazz sound, he opens the doors to a wide audience with his comprehensible and understandable jazz and his unmistakably soft trumpet sound. Since 2018, he has been running the jazz club Ella & Louis in Mannheim's Rosengarten as artistic director and managing director and treats his audience to three to four concerts a week.

You can see Matthias Ockert playing electric guitar
Matthias Ockert

As a composer in contemporary classical music, as a guitarist at home in jazz, Matthias Ockert openly traces his paths through the orbit of contemporary music. He studied composition with Wolfgang Rihm, Sandeep Bhagwati, Hanspeter Kyburz in Karlsruhe and Berlin and jazz guitar with Attila Zoller, Bill Connors and Steve Khan in New York.

Organization / Institution
ZKM | Center for Art und Media and Jazzkeller Frankfurt

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