Jazzinstitut Darmstadt, Darmstadt

The Jazzinstitut Darmstadt is a world-renowned research and information center on jazz.

In Darmstadt, a city of about 160,000 inhabitants, jazz events are held every month in all areas from traditional Dixieland to the cross-border avant-garde, yet Darmstadt's jazz scene cannot compare with those of Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart or Munich. However, Darmstadt's name is now well known in the jazz world through the city's Jazz Institute, which enjoys an excellent reputation with its work as an international information and documentation center even in the birthplace of this music, the USA.

The beginnings of today's Jazz Institute date back to 1983, when the city acquired the jazz collection of the well-known jazz critic and producer Joachim Ernst Berendt - records, books, magazines, photos, posters and much more. Based on this collection, then housed in the renowned International Music Institute, the widely acclaimed exhibition That's Jazz. The Sound of the 20th Century, which was on display at the Museum Mathildenhöhe in 1988 and whose comprehensive catalog is still a highly regarded documentation of jazz history today. As the collection continued to grow, the city decided to incorporate it into a jazz institute that, in addition to pure archival work, would also support jazz life and jazz research through events and its own projects. In September 1990, this institute became a reality, initially operating from temporary premises in the John F. Kennedy House. The director of the institute was and is Wolfram Knauer, who was awarded the Hessian Jazz Prize in 2002 for his commitment to expanding the institute's activities. On October 3, 1997, the current headquarters of the institute was inaugurated, the historic Bessunger Kavaliershaus. Here, there are sufficient workplaces available for visitors. In addition, there is a small concert room in the vaulted cellar below the house, which is ideal for combining jazz music practice and theory. The Kavaliershaus has thus meanwhile developed into a meeting place for people interested in jazz - musicians, researchers, fans. The weather trumpet on the roof and the sculpture of blues harmonica virtuoso Little Walter on the Jagdhofplatz, unveiled in September 2001, also signal the building's new use to the outside world.

Every two years, the Jazz Institute hosts the Darmstadt Jazz Forum, the only regular jazz conference in the world. Researchers and musicians from all over Europe and the USA travel to the symposium to exchange opinions and experiences; the festival held at the same time illuminates special aspects of the music from a very practical point of view. The lectures are documented by detailed conference reports in thirteen books to date in the Institute's own book series.

The Jazz Institute houses the largest public jazz collection in Europe. This includes reference books and a large number of visual and audio media - there are now well over 80,000 sound carriers in the archive, including 40,000 LPs, more than 20,000 CDs, plus shellac records, 45 RPM singles, 25 cm LPs, DVDs, videos, photographs, posters and so on. The most used part of the collection, however, is the extensive periodical holdings, with well over 1,000 different periodical titles, more than 80,000 individual issues - periodicals from around the world, dating back to the 1920s. The Institute's Jazz Index, the world's most comprehensive computer bibliography of the written information held in the archive, is used by researchers from all over the world - now mainly via the Internet.

The Jazzinstitut is not a pure research archive, but an information center for everyone. To the outside world, this is evident in the series of events organized by the Jazzinstitut - in addition to the Jazzforum, the workshop "Darmstädter Jazz Conceptions", or in concert series such as the "Jazz Talk", where musicians not only play, but also talk in between about their music, their careers, the possibilities as well as the problems of a life in the jazz scene. Finally, on the last Friday of every month, musicians from all over the Rhine-Main region meet in the vaulted cellar below the Jazzinstitut for the Bessunger Jamsession organized by the Förderverein Jazz in Darmstadt e.V..

Until 2009, the Jazzinstitut published a biennial Wegweiser Jazz, a compendium of addresses and information on jazz in Germany. Since 2012, this address directory exists only in the form of an online database at www.wegweiserjazz.de, which is maintained and managed by the Jazzinstitut.

The Jazz Institute is open to everyone. In the user rooms in the Bessunger Kavaliershaus, one can browse through the latest of the approximately sixty jazz magazines to which one subscribes, listen to recordings, or inform oneself about nationwide events through brochures on display. In addition to jazz, fringe areas are also covered: rhythm and blues, Latin jazz, salsa, etc.

The Jazz Institute Darmstadt tries to build a bridge between science and practice, between service for a music that lives on the voluntary work of many and careful documentation of musical developments from the past and present, between regional cultural work and international discourse. The institute has meanwhile made a name for itself worldwide, but does not work in the proverbial ivory tower. Visitors are welcome, and every question is taken seriously.

The Jazz Institute is a member of the IASA country group Germany/Switzerland.