Founded in Frankfurt in 1953 and playing music ever since, the BARRELHOUSE JAZZBAND is the longest standing traditional-jazz outfit in Germany. With their repertoire ranging from 1920s jazz to the contemporary New Orleans Revival, the band presents 100 years of jazz history – live. Well-known also outside of Europe, the Barrelhouse Jazzband has toured over 50 countries all over the globe, at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut, amongst others. Since 1962, the clarinettist Reimer von Essen has been the band’s leader and spiritus rector. In 2011, von Essen was awarded the Hessischer Jazzpreis, the Hessian Jazz Award, in recognition of his work.
When they played at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1968, the band was awarded honorary citizenship of New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. In the early 20th century, barrel houses were basic drinking establishments in New Orleans, where the first jazz bands performed. The BARRELHOUSE JAZZBAND has been preserving the rawness and power of this kind of music, also in order to play it live at their concerts. For this reason, they have established their reputation as the most popular outfit on, and the driving force behind, Germany’s hot jazz scene.
The band’s first long-playing record came out in 1966, in the United States. To date, they have produced some 30 CDs, records and DVDs, which have received several awards, among them the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis.
The band’s special, themed concerts, which are also performed in the context of concert cycles featuring more “classical” music, are a unique feature on the European jazz scene. Under the title BARRELHOUSE JAZZ GALA, the band presents as part of their annual autumn concert-tour great jazz and blues soloists from the United States, such as soloists from the bands of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, to name but a few. Since its reopening in 1981, the ALTE OPER in Frankfurt has been a Mecca for thousands of jazz fans from all over the world at the annual BARRELHOUSE JAZZ PARTY.
Further information available at www.barrelhouse-jazzband.de.