Insel Broetz Festival für Freie Musik
Farida Amadou / Kaja Draksler / Gunda Gottschalk / Achim Kaufmann / Jelena Kuljič / Almut Kühne / Robert Landfermann / Christian Lillinger / Dominik Mahnig / Bart Maris / Matthias Müller / Kathrin Pechlof / John-Dennis Renken / Jan Roder / Johannnes Schleiermacher / Wolfgang Schmidtke / Aki Takase / Kazuhisa Uchiashi / Els Vandeweye
Curated by Wolfgang Schmidtke
On June 22, 2023, saxophonist and clarinettist Peter Brötzmann passed away. Two years earlier, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, the INSEL in Wuppertal had organized a three-day festival with international guests – BROEtz 80! – which celebrated the outstanding status of this exceptional artist. The musicians and the audience literally came from all over the world to celebrate these three days in our jazz city.
In the aftermath, Peter Brötzmann and I decided to further develop the unique program concept and establish a biennial international festival for free music. A festival that does not invite ensembles that are currently playing in clubs and halls up and down the country, but artists who have something new and unusual, sometimes disturbing, in their playing. With BROEtz 23!, which Peter Brötzmann helped to prepare, it finally became clear that the unique significance he has achieved in the international jazz world is a Wuppertal specialty, the continuation of which we absolutely want to ensure – through a festival program with an absolutely uncompromising, forward-looking artistic vision.
The idea of free music would lead itself ad absurdum if we stuck to the traditional “sounds like whoopataal”. BROEtz 2025 presents musicians who stand for fresh, innovative, unheard paths of improvisation. Where others discover that a certain band, a certain album, a stylistic niche is particularly easy to market commercially, we – in the spirit of Peter Brötzmann – consistently search for new musical concepts and bring them – sometimes for the first time together – to our stage!
