IN THE BEGINNING
After years of working for radio as a music editor and producer of the jazz show “Jazzbeats” (in the 1990s), I decided, also at the request of various well-known musicians, to set up my own business in Berlin. So I registered my company in March 2001 and started in the Berlin district of Wedding, a former notorious Berlin working-class district. The first office was part of a recording studio that was located on the site of the Uferhallen, a bus station of the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe with former repair shops. The depot was shut down in 2007 and developed by Uferhallen Immobilien AG as an art and culture location. In the early years I represented musicians based in Berlin, such as the internationally renowned jazz pianist Uli Lenz, who was often invited by the German Goethe Institute to countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia with his piano, bass and drum trios or solo. The Goethe Institute was one of my first clients, along with Berlin musicians. One of the tasks was to find a French musician who could give concerts with Uli Lenz, since the Goethe Institute no longer wanted to finance everything on its own, but in cooperation with the French cultural institute Alliance Francaise. I suggested contacting saxophonist Francois Jeanneau, as I knew that Uli Lenz’s music harmonized ideally with Jeanneau’s work. And that’s how it happened, the two hit it off right away, played all over the world and recorded award-winning albums on the German label Tutu Records. On my recommendation, Uli Lenz also recorded an album called “Rainmaker’s Dance” in the USA on Bob Karcy’s Arkadia Records label in New York, which was very successful.
MOVING FORWARD
Over the years, more and more musicians, especially from abroad, got in touch and JAZZMEDIA & MORE became more international. One of the largest European jazz festivals, the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, commissioned me to organize a small Danish music festival in Berlin. I developed the program together with a Danish team, organized a press conference at the Danish embassy and the whole event was a great success. This led to inquiries from other festivals, both regional and international, which we, meanwhile, JAZZMEDIA & MORE was no longer a one-man company, supported for many years with promotion and media work.
In the meantime, we also developed a music city map for one of the largest German music promoters, Karsten Jahnke from Hamburg, based on the model of a map that was already published and folded every year in Berlin, which was financed by the placement of advertisements and printed in large numbers for the city of Hamburg.
The music fair jazzahead! in Bremen, which started out small in 2006 and is now one of the largest music fairs in the world, we have supported it from the start, especially its partner countries, which are at jazzahead! present annually. Of course, also because Bremen is the city where I grew up and to which I owe a lot. I finally decided to move my agency to Bremen in 2011, also mainly because of jazzahead! to relocate and only run a small external office in Berlin. I’ve been commuting between these two cities ever since.
I have been a member of the jury in international music competitions such as “Big Sky” in Moscow or the Bremen Jazz Prize and I am a member of the annual international jazz talent competition “7-Virtual-Jazz-Club”, where young musicians under the age of 25 are chosen. The winner receives a 1-year PR contract with JAZZMEDIA & MORE free of charge to promote their musical career.
In the meantime, our agency has become a link between musicians, labels, media representatives and organizers. We are mediators and consultants for the entire music industry and ensure balance where compromises are necessary. As the managing music expert, I have also been on the board of the JFK music association in Syke near Bremen since 2020.
In 2021 we celebrated our companies 20th anniversary and we are looking forward into the future with new tasks and challenges together with our International media partner JAZZ IN EUROPE, the Dutch based and biggest online magazine for jazz on the continent led by the experienced musician, long-year professional in the music business and close friend Andrew Read. Together we develop tailor-made concepts for musicians, labels and organizers in Europe and beyond.