You stand on deck, beneath you a more than hundred-year-old steam engine hums and vibrates, the old town glides past in front of you, and as soon as the ships meet, the sound of other bands drifts over from the neighbouring boats. That is how our festival’s Riverboat Shuffle begins: the oldest and largest paddle-steamer fleet in the world, with each ship staffed by bands from the traditional jazz scene, each with its own character, from New Orleans to swing. This constellation, several top bands performing at once on several floating stages, exists nowhere else in the world. Passing the Elbe Castles, under the Blue Wonder bridge and on towards Pillnitz, which is why connoisseurs plan their arrival specifically for Thursday. Anyone who misses it can take the same route on Friday on the Riverboat Special Trip, with a smaller line-up and without the full fleet formation. As every year, the places for 2027 will be sold out long before the festival begins. Anyone who wants to be there should secure a place on board as soon as advance sales start.

Ten musicians, who in their day jobs are members of major Berlin orchestras such as the Deutsche Oper or RSO Berlin, become for one evening classical players with a compulsory licence to jazz, a band you are better off seeing than merely hearing. Since 1989, Brass Band Berlin under Thomas Hoffmann has been taking classical material apart and reworking it: Wagner and Bach are jazza-fied, Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance and Ravel’s Bolero meet Goodman, Basie and the Wild West; in between, Hoffmann reads poetry and taps Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter on a real typewriter. The same musicians otherwise accompany Pavarotti or Netrebko in their home orchestras; here they play with the same precision, for listening, watching and laughing. Each of the ten is a soloist on their instrument, but also reaches for a whistle, a rubber duck or an air horn. What emerges is less a concert than a high-energy show between cabaret and classical music, which regularly ends with standing ovations.