Do you know your cool jazz from your free jazz? Hard bop from avant-garde? If the answer is no, then all the more reason to check out Jazzfest Berlin (30.10–02.11.2025) – not least because it stretches well beyond jazz to everything from hip hop to soul. The 62nd edition of the Berliner Festspiele’s four-day festival is billed as a space fostering encounter and artistic diversity in response to a turbulent world, with a program featuring 120 international musicians playing across ten different venues. It opens with a four-hour evening of three concerts: energetic improv trio Angelika Niescier, Tomeka Reid and Eliza Salem; followed by the rhythmic depth of Felix Henkelhausen’s septet Deranged Particles and a meditative duet from Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith (30.10, 18h).
The late-night jazz basement energy will be in full force at music club Quasimodo on Friday evening (31.10, 22h30), where collective The Young Mothers will be blending jazz with hip hop and metal. It’s followed by a jam session with musicians from the festival program. On Sunday 02.11 it’s time to go to church – the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church – where French saxophonist Sakina Abdou and trio The Handover take to the stage for a musical afternoon in an architecturally stunning atmosphere (starts 15h). In addition to the main concerts, there is a whole program of Kiez sessions, free lunchtime concerts and children’s workshops as part of Community Week. Check out the full line-up and get tickets here.
Text: Benji Haughton / Photos: Ana Iramain, Anna Sorgalla, Thomas Sayers Ellis
Jazzfest Berlin (30.10–02.11.2025) – program, tickets and more info here.
@berlinerfestspiele
