Update 2009/02/15: Winnner of the Award is the Frederik Koester Quartet. Congratulations!
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The fourth edition of the "New German Jazz Award Mannheim" (Neuer Deutscher Jazzpreis) will take place next weekend 2009/02/13-14. It is Germany's lucrative Jazz Award and the award comes with a €10,000 purse for one of the three band, which will play on Saturday evening at Alte Feuerwache Mannheim. (Mannheim, the little neighboring city of Heidelberg...)
The three bands on stage have been chosen out of more than 200 applications. A panel of jazz critics - and musicians preselected 10 bands, and the curator - this year: pianist Joachim Kuehn - has chosen three of them to play on saturday:
Carsten Daerr Trio
Angelika Niescier & André Nendza
Frederik Koester Quartet
On Friday, the festival will open with the Lindy Huppertsberg Ensemble and the curator's band Joachim Kuehn's Kalimba.
The interesting and special about the New German Jazz Award is it's procedure to find the winner. The audience will decide! Everyone who attends the concert gets a voting card and after the three concerts the band with the simple majority is the winner. Besides the band prize, there is another one, for the best solo player. He will receive € 1.000.
My personal favorite is the Frederik Köster Quartet, but this year's nominees are very close. A tense evening ist guaranteed...
