On the initiative of Prof. Markus Harm, the Department of Popular Music (ipop) at the mdw took part in the European Jazz Workshop this year for the first time. The European Jazz Workshop is part of a “Blended Intensive Program” through Erasmus+. The project was launched several years ago on the initiative of the Norwegian Academy of Music Oslo. The host institution was the Conservatory “Arrigo Boito” in Parma, with the Nuremberg University of Music also involved.

From May 2 to 7, twenty-one students from the four educational institutions met in Parma to get to know each other musically. The mdw’s Department of Popular Music was represented by Stefan Eitzenberger (tenor saxophone), Stephan Lerchbaumer (baritone saxophone), Rahel Neyer (violin), and Lilian Urbas (cello).

The teachers were Roberto Bonati (Parma), Helge Sunde (Oslo), Steffen Schorn (Nuremberg) and I, Markus Geiselhart (Vienna).

A second week will take place in Parma at the end of September, which will end with a concert by the “Large Ensemble” made up of these twenty-one students at the jazz festival in Parma. The motto of the concert program is “The Travels of Marco Polo”.

The first week in May was about the students getting to know each other and getting to know different musical influences that can be placed in the context of the “Travels of Marco Polo”. By the second week of the workshop in September, the students will have written compositions on this theme.

Every day there was a morning and an afternoon rehearsal, during which we lecturers introduced the participating students to various, sometimes very free, concepts for improvisation and ensemble playing. As a result, an independent ensemble sound and a lively exchange between the students from the four different nations developed within just a few days.

The students from each university formed an ensemble and presented themselves to the other participants in a short concert on four evenings.

There were also two units to which guest lecturers were connected via Zoom: Prof. Cenk Guray from the University of Ankara and Prof. Giovanni de Zorzi from the University of Venice.

All in all, it was a very inspiring week for everyone involved, both for the students and for us teachers, with a great deal of exchange in which we were able to discover or deepen various musical concepts for ourselves.

We are now looking forward to seeing what compositions the students come up with by the end of September, which will then be rehearsed with the large ensemble during a second workshop week in Parma and performed at the end.

The European Jazz Workshop will take place in Oslo in 2025 and then in Nuremberg and Vienna in 2026 and 2027. The exact year (2026 or 2027) in which the workshop will take place in Vienna has not yet been decided.