The Moers Festival was created in 1971 by German producer Burkhard Hennen as the International New Jazz Festival Moers. The inaugural event was held in 1972 in the paved courtyard of Moers Castle (Moerser Shloss), the city’s oldest known building. What started as a small open-air music festival has grown to become one of largest international festivals dedicated to jazz and contemporary improvised music.
In 1974 the team of the Moers Festival established the festival’s own jazz record label, Moers Music, to document performances at the festival. The first albums released on the label were Solo: Live at Moers Festival by Anthony Braxton and Anthony Braxton Quartet at Moers Festival.
In 1975, the Moers Festival moved from the Moers Castle courtyard to a nearby park because of its ever-growing attendance. For several decades, it had been held in a large marquee and a number provisional venues before finally moving into its own festival hall in 2014. Burkhard Hennen served as the artistic director of the Moers Festival from 1971 to 2005. When Hennen retired, Reiner Michalke took over the festival.
The festival was originally focused on free jazz, but now it encompasses all kinds of jazz-related music and other genres and styles like world music and crossovers with popular music. Many renowned musicians have performed at the Moers Festival, including Jan Garbarek, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Abdullah Ibrahim, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Cecil Taylor, David Murray, and Fred Frith.
In 2015, the Moers Festival received the EJN Award for Adventurous Programming. It is awarded by an independent jury of the Europe Jazz Network to international jazz festivals which are not afraid of experiments and innovations while staying faithful to the spirit of jazz.
Photo: moers-festival.de
