Georg Kreisler songs: from jazz satire to tango

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Unfortunately, Theo Bleckmann had to cancel his performance on February 9 due to illness. Fortunately, Matthias Knoche from Berlin has agreed to interpret the Georg Kreisler songs. Many thanks to Matthias for standing in! We wish Theo a speedy recovery!

So it remains an evening full of fine humor, biting satire and fat big band sounds in the jazz club Moods.

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On some evenings, everything is extraordinary: a big band playing the songs of cabaret artist, composer and writer Georg Kreisler. A Grammy-nominated vocalist who pushes the boundaries of jazz. And who lends a completely new character to the sometimes biting, sometimes furious lyrics of Kreisler, the Austrian-Jewish “best in class in the school of black humor” (Die Zeit). Theo Bleckmann, ZHdK lecturer in jazz singing, ECHO Award winner and the voice of the aliens in “Men in Black”, has already worked with greats such as Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass. As always, the arrangements are by Ed Partyka. Partyka and Bleckmann have known each other for quite some time: the two performed the Kreisler program for the first time in 2007. They have also worked together in the meantime, with the German vocal chameleon Bleckmann being a guest of the Umo Helsinki Jazz Orchestra at the end of 2022, whose director is also – spoiler, no surprise – the exiled American Partyka. Now they are teaming up again for their Kreisler programme: subtle humour, biting satire, fat sounds and vocals that defy categorization. A combination that is so strange that it is typical ZJO again.

Theo Bleckmann was born in Dortmund in 1966 and was already a vocal soloist in a children’s choir as a child. At the same time, he learned piano and guitar. At the age of 21, he became the first singer in the German National Youth Jazz Orchestra and moved to New York two years later, where he still lives today, after meeting the singer Sheila Jorden at a workshop in Graz. The GRAMMY®-nominated jazz singer and composer can now look back on various award-winning albums, prestigious awards and countless collaborations with international greats. Theo Bleckmann is “a singer of inventive instinct and fervent musicality” (Nate Chinen, New York Times) and undisputedly one of the most accomplished, innovative and astonishing talents in jazz today.