Arystan Petzold

"Is that still jazz?" interests Arystan Petzold less than what the question opens up: a fluid practice of listening, reacting and deciding in the moment – shaped by trumpet and jazz studies, by hip-hop, funk and soul, by West African, Afro-Latin and ritual concepts, and by working across several languages and countries.

Born in Greifswald, he began on the trumpet in the brass orchestras of the Vogtland region. Later came Madrid, jazz studies in Dresden and many years in bands, collectives, theatre productions and transcultural projects. Today he lives and works mainly between Umbria and eastern Germany.

Jazz here means less a genre than an attitude: what counts is not stylistic borders but ways of musical thinking – modal, pentatonic and microtonal spaces, repetition, groove, organic transitions, frictions and transformations. Music is not a closed system here, but a moving process between order and chaos.

Improvisational freedom does not arise in isolation, but in relation to others: listening, answering, leaving space, taking responsibility. This is how performance, teaching and research interweave – in concerts, workshops and Re_Connection. Added to this is a multilingual practice in German, Italian, Spanish, English and Russian that shapes his work in international contexts.