64. jazzwerkstatt Peitz

Under the motto „Dialog in Tönen" (Dialogue in Sounds), the 64. jazzwerkstatt Peitz opens its next chapter in 2027. Since the 1970s, the festival has ranked among the most significant meetings of international jazz and improvised music in Germany. In 2026, the Deutscher Jazzpreis named the 2025 edition “Festival des Jahres”.

The festival takes place in the Hüttenwerk, an ironworks built in 1810 and now part of the historic Ironworks and Fishery Museum of Peitz. Old furnace architecture, exposed timber beams, open-air stages and the carp ponds that surround the site give the music a setting where sound carries differently, and where a concert often becomes a conversation with the place itself. Cycle paths run through the surrounding forests and meadows of Lusatia “Gurkenradweg”, which gives the audience the possibility to explore nature, sound and community.

The festival story began in 1973 when two locals, locksmith Peter "Jimi" Metag and optician Ulli Blobel, started a festival in Peitz - a small town with a current population of only 4000. There were not enough bands to invite, so they combined the musicians they had into new formations and built international connections. A network of free improvisers grew around the festival meadow, with a loyal audience championing their initiative. In the GDR, free sounds carried political weight, for the players and for those listening. The festival ran until the government shut it down in 1982. Ulli Blobel restarted it in 2011 under very different conditions, and the spirit of freedom came with it.

Fifty years after the founding, Ulli Blobel passed the festival to his daughter Marie Blobel, who now directs it. She brings the experience of her Berlin concert series jazzexzess and keeps the principles of its founders. Her invitation to the audience describes what the programme is built on: "live jazz is more than just a performance: it thrives on presence, risk-taking, listening, and the spontaneity of the moment."

Reviewing the 63. edition for The Free Jazz Collective, Paul Acquaro wrote: "Overall, one could sense a tilt towards the new - nights that ended with experimental but danceable music, a series of risky but successful workshop concerts with musicians meeting for the first time, an infusion of world-music elements, and a loosening, but not denying, deference to the past, showing a way forward."

Younger visitors have their own place at the festival, and the grounds are built for walking, lounging under the canopy and climbing the Hüttenwerk stairway to the rooftop, where you look out over the town, the festival grounds and the carp ponds in one view. Kids can make music with the imaginative looping station "Loco Loops", and everyone can climb aboard the "Karpfenbummler", an electric miniature train that takes you in style from the festival to town and on to the train station.

In addition to the festival, jazzwerkstatt Peitz runs an Improviser in Residence concert series that develops and presents new work. Programmes for children under 12 invite them to create improvised music of their own. Each year the festival also presents a concert by a musician from Brandenburg and awards them the Jazzpreis Brandenburg.

Come for a day or stay for the whole festival. Bring your curiosity, a pair of walking shoes and time to listen. The musicians of the 64.jazzwerkstatt Peitz looks forward to meeting you in the Hüttenwerk, between the carp ponds and the old furnaces, in 2027.