Old Time Memory Jazzband (Jena, Germany)

Several gigs in TV, the participation at the International Dresden Dixieland Festival in 1974 and 1980, the teamwork together with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Jena and Stendal as well as international concerts in the Czech Republic and Georgia have been the musical heights before the wall came down.
During the following years the band took the audience by storm during lots of concerts in all parts of Germany, especially in the various Jazzclubs. Additionally in the beginning of 1996 the band took part in a TV show from MdR.
In March 1996 the first time in the USA, the band was meet with warm reception and success during the 22nd Jazz Reunion Fest in New Orleans.
Almost 37 years after the foundation of the band the first CD was recorded and released in 1999.
During the year of the 40th anniversary a second very successful trip to New Orleans was made, also there was the participation at the “18th Dixieland Festival & Jazz Band Ball” in Berlin.

The Old Time Memory Jazzband has been found in 1962 by students at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena and is since then a popular and well known Jazzband all over Germany and especially in Thuringia.
In spite of a radical personal rejuvenation the musicians still stick to the same style of Jazz, the two-beat-Jazz, as done first of all by Louis Armstrong during the twenties.
With trumpet, clarinet and trombone in the melody section and banjo, piano and sousaphone in the rhythm section a typical sound is created, tied with a stylistic pure performance of solo and tutti improvisations. In regards of the Jazz history mainly oriented at the New-Orleans-Jazz, the band also plays the good old Chicago-Dixieland, thus extended by polyphonic singing.

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