The piano is getting company. Frank Muschalle has invited Stephan Holstein, who brings clarinet and saxophone along. In Die Tonne, boogie-woogie meets a horn voice – and a pianist who unites bass and melody in two hands has a musical partner at his side.

Muschalle is a familiar name at the festival as a boogie-woogie pianist from Berlin. In this music, the left hand carries a continuous bass figure while the right lays down blues phrases and riffs over it. Holstein adds another melodic voice. His two instruments have different connections to jazz: the clarinet has been part of it since the early days in New Orleans, while the saxophone later shaped swing and rhythm and blues. The guest thus broadens the musical interplay at the piano.

For this encounter, a basement club is no unlikely setting. Boogie-woogie emerged among African American pianists in the southern United States and found its centre in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. It was played in bars, dance halls and at private parties, where piano and audience came together at close quarters. That intimacy is part of the history of this music.

Die Tonne has its very own history of musical closeness. On 13 March 1981, it opened in the vaulted cellar of the Kurländer Palais. During the festival, the club became a meeting place for musicians and audience alike. This is where stair jazz was born: bands came into the already packed Die Tonne after their performances and played from the steps. Where space in the room ran short, the music still found its way to the audience.

To this day, the Tonne is one of the festival’s most traditional venues. For Muschalle and Holstein, it provides that familiar setting for the interplay between piano and horns. Here, boogie-woogie does not appear in the club as a lone musical outsider: with clarinet and saxophone at its side, the evening continues into the jazz traditions to which the festival has been dedicated since 1971.