Carte Blanche Erwin Ditzner "Freedom Orchestra

Think big! Ever since Erwin Ditzner received a verbal commitment from festival director Rainer Kern for an annual carte blanche after an inspiring concert at Heidelberg's Karlstorbahnhof in 2008, the busy drummer has not let himself be left behind. Every year he surprises with exciting constellations that take place without rehearsals or agreements. Sometimes they only get to know each other the night before the concert, over a glass of wine. A free hand! And so we remember many inspired encounters, some of them documented on recordings, with Marilyn Crispell, Aki Takase, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Conny Bauer, Christopher Dell, Jeff Parker, Luc Ex, Chris Jarrett or - more often - Sebastian Gramss. What all Carte Blanche lineups have in common, however, is that there have never been more than four musicians on stage. In this respect, not only the all-star band of 2022 is a small sensation, but also the fact that it is a sextet. So many of them, you could think it was an orchestra. Wink, wink! An orchestra with two unknowns, because Erwin Ditzner has never played with Achim Kaufmann and Fabian Dudek, while at the concert that initiated the carte blanche at the time, Rudi Mahall and Sebastian Gramss were involved. And Ditzner, Gramss and Matthias Muche were together in India for a longer time for a project. And the "Freedom" in the orchestra's name is not a nod to the times, but points in the direction of the 1960s and 1970s with the vision of "free" playing. One suspects that one thing leads to another.