Concert Review – Julia Oschewsky Band / NL @ B-Flat club Berlin by OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog contributor W van Coeveren

July 9th, 2012

B-Flat club Berlin - foto - OTA-Berlin

b-flat

Accoustic Music

+ Jazz Club

10119 Berlin-Mitte

Rosenthaler Str. 13

F+F +49 30 2833123

Öffnung

So. – Do. 20h

Fr. / Sa. 21h

M1667 H81

http://www.b-flat-berlin.de/index.php

Singer-Songwriter/Pop Jazz aus Amsterdam Julia Oschewsky (voc), Jaco Benckhuijsen (p, keyb, orgel), Marc Kluschat (g), Pat Cleaver (b), Ruben Steijn (dr)

I do not often go there – but after a great Beethoven Concert at the Piano Salon Christofori with the Russian but in Berlin living Pianist Georgy Gromov – I deceded to listen to some live Jazz.

Jazz is simply mid-night music and I always have the radio on my pre-tuned Berlin Jazz station -http://jazzradioberlin.radio.de/

While I know about many great Opera singers – because I like Opera very much – I do not know that many female jazz vocalists. At least that is what I thought until I forced myself to write down a list of those that I did know …and the list is actually more than 5!

Not in order of importance I have compiled the following list of best known ..with some help from the Internet.

Billie Holiday

Ella Fitzgerald

Sarah Vaughan

Diana Krall

Dinah Washington

Nina Simone

Holly Cole

Carmen McRae

The list is just mine and could be a lot longer of course.

So it was with great interest I ran into Julia Oschewsky and her band who are both Dutch and German – sort of like Schalke 04!

Anyways Julia has a great voice, presented a very contemporary program including a some of her own songs. However I wish she would at least have done a couple more ‘classics’ if only to compare her style with ‘the others’.

It is sort of like Aretha Franklin being able to do Beatles songs much better than the Beatles – in my humble opinion anyways.

Scandinavian jazz vocalists – with which I am much more familiar- stray away from the standard jazz songs and repertoire and seem to be able to delve into more popular music genres – they remain and are basically jazz singers as their North American counterparts. Otherwise most European jazz singers tend to be more traditional and much less adventurous than the Scandinavian singers.

Nina Simone and Diana Krall are some of those female vocal artists that once one gets a taste of and then suddenly can’t get enough of – like with the music of Miles Davis or John Coltrane.

Anyways I will definitely go back to B-flat again………..after hearing some Beethoven, Prokfiev or Brahms!

The following is Julia Oschewsky about Julia Oschewsky Band from their website – “Julia knows how to surprise with interesting compositions. The interaction of her musicians is subtle, improvisation and theatrical melodies melt in an unfamiliar way, catchy musical themes find their place within expressive arrangements. As a frontwoman Julia impresses with convincing stage presence and a vivid appearance. She sings with a persuasion that expresses something really personal.

It is hard to assign her music to a specific style. Her songs are a game of colours and sounds, full of tension, impulsive, lively, playful and imaginative.

Over the past years Julia & Band performed a.o. at: Amersfoort Jazz Festival, IJazz Festival, Uitmarkt Amsterdam, Keep An Eye Jazz Award, Jazz Festival Bingen Swingt, Jazz Nachwuchs Festival Leipzig, New Generation Contest (Jazz an der Donau), Nederlandse Vocalisten Concours 2009 and a lot of club venues throughout Germany like Stellwerk Hamburg, B-Flat Berlin, Jazzschmiede Düsseldorf etc.

Julia belonged also to one of the finalists in the Dutch Jazz Competition in 2010.”

See previous OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog articles on Live Jazz in Berlin here - http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/category/berlin/entertainment/live-music/live-jazz/

=================================================================================================

Classical Music in Berlin-visitors – whether opera, piano, orchestra or other – often stay at … … “OTA-Berlin – the intelligent alternative to apartment hotels in Berlin.

OTA-Berlin has 4 different buildings, according to the classical Czech, his French, German / Austria, and Spanish composers named in the Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg.

If you like classical music and or jazz – then OTA Berlin, the best accommodation for you! http://www.ota-berlin.de/

This blog is brought to you by …..OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog’ is part of OTA-Berlin ‘……the intelligent Apartment-Alternative to Hotels in Berlin’. The views of the article are those of the writer Mr W van Coeveren and not necessarily those of OTA-Berlin.

The Blog provides OTA-Berlin guests a quick overview of the cultural, sports, social and other related activities taking place in Berlin during their stay.

OTA-Berlin, the intelligent Apartment Alternative to Hotels in Berlin!

Concert Review – Julia Oschewsky Band / NL @ B-Flat club Berlin by OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog contributor W van Coeveren from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.