Review: Jazz in the Blaue Salon

Jazz im Blauen Salon SoSe 2024 22 A K

Last Friday, May 24, incredible scenes unfolded in the Blaue Salon at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Naively initiating a musical evening as student cinema operators, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the rush of audience and enthusiastic musicians...

Some of our team had already heard that there is a jazz session scene, but nobody had ever heard of what was going to happen that evening in the Blaue Salon. For a good 5 hours, the jazz went off in the our little Cinema venue, the hall was bursting at the seams, because with just under 50 seats we simply couldn't cope with the rush, so the audience and musicians who couldn't get a seat or a place on stage cavorted in the corridor, the escape doors were opened to create even more viewing opportunities.

When 10 minutes before the start of the event no 5 people had arrived, we had to console Jason, who had traveled all the way from Leipzig. We discussed whether we should even play our 5 songs as the opening band for 5 people - none of those present had an instrument in their luggage, whether something like a “jam” could develop, or whether we just had to throw in the towel after 20 minutes because we had no more songs to play, we were not really sure...

But the fear was very unjustified, after the academic quarter of an hour delay the hall was half full and we greeted our audience, apologizing in advance for the fact that we were actually the cinema operators of the HfG student cinema and not jazz musicians - we, that was Moritz, Jason, Philip and Chris. But we were better than expected, the audience looked very pleased with our performance, which was confirmed when we asked them. In the atmospherically darkened Blaue Salon, we thought we could already see dark figures with bulky suitcases that looked like instrument cases. And after just 3 songs, the first people who wanted to play pushed to the edge of the stage, and this was the beginning of a very legendary evening in the Blaue Salon.

From jazz to hip hop, funk, from seasoned professionals to brave beginners, everything mingled on the stage of the Blue Salon, which was well worth setting up.

People got talking in the foyer and it turned out that some had traveled from as far away as Rastatt and Pforzheim to enjoy some jazz.

Who would have thought it, and by popular demand we can already announce that this will by no means be the last musical intervention in the Blaue Salon. We look forward to the next time and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took part!

Thanks to Florian Knöbl for the Fotos!