Quasimodo (music venue)
The Quasimodo is a jazz club in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg.
The well-known jazz and music cellar Quasimodo is located together with the Quasimodo Café and the vagrants stage in the building of Delphi movie palace and offers up to 350 guests. In addition to modern jazz blues, soul, funk, rock, Latin music and world music.
History
From starting up in the 1970s
The restaurant is located in the head 12a Street, corner of Pheasant Street, in the basement of Delphi, which was 1927/1928 built by Bernhard Sehring as a dance hall. The late 1920s / early 1930s was the Delphi Palace as often overcrowded "Mecca of Swing Kids", which had to close 1943, and was heavily damaged during air raids. From 1947 to 1949 was a first tentative reconstruction of the building in which a cinema with a large screen and 1,000 seats, the current Delphi movie palace was at the zoo, furnished. Under provisional conditions found in restaurant Delphi cellar again concerts. In 1948, the cornetist Rex Stewart with the Hot Club Berlin for Amiga recordings on.
Presumably, opened in 1967 in the basement of Delphis "Quartier Quasimodo ". In the neighborhood are among other things that also built by Sehring Theatre of the West, universities (TU, University of the Arts ) and the pub and restaurant landscape around the Savigny Platz - - The central, Kurfürstendamm - convenient location in the city of West Berlin, it was point of contact for students, tourists visiting Berlin, cinema and theater-goers as well as " night owls of all kinds ." It contributed to the reputation of the city, Berlin is (thanks to the lack of curfew) " open all ".
Originally the restaurant drew attention to himself by a varied, not confined to music live program, then transformed but by a " student pub with cabaret " one of the most respected jazz venues in the city. Organized early as November 1968 free jazz musicians in a "quasi" counter-events to as " established " or "commercial" criticized the Berlin Jazz Festival, thus laying the foundation stone for the (later mainly in the Latin Quarter takes place ) Total Music Meeting. Also present were at that time, for example, Peter Brötzmann, Han Bennink, Gunter Hampel, John McLaughlin and Pharoah Sanders. The narrow, low and smoky basement restaurant also developed among musicians as a meeting place after concerts and spontaneous jam sessions.
The period after 1975
In 1975, Giorgio Carioti took over the business and had the name shortened to Quasimodo. Under the direction of the Genoese former business students soon came to international musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Chaka Khan and Pat Metheny.
Carioti changed relatively little to the appearance of Quasimodo, but enlarged the stage and invested a lot in the stage and recording techniques. Despite the inadequate conditions (including winding premises, often large and tightly packed audience) is known Quasimodo for a high acoustic quality of live concerts and a specialized visitors shaft. Despite a number of " more appropriate " venues, it is further venue in the framework program of the Berlin Jazz Festival and Germany radio culture transmits regular jazz concerts from the club.
The more times weekly concerts usually start by 22 clock. Critics criticize, since the late 1990s, the share of the jazz program will continuously reduced, but does this reproach not to a closer review of the concert history. Over the entire period of its existence can be found in the Hunchback program an eclectic mix of different genres - is changed only gradually and subordinated to the changing public taste sake - taking into account the requirements of a commercial event premises.
Special media attention gave an unannounced appearance by Prince in 1987 after a concert in Germany Hall. In 1989, the blues musicians Sidney "Guitar Crusher" Selby on a live album at Quasimodo.