Philosophy and Intentions
As stated in the opening page , “The purpose of this web-site is to provide a complete panorama of the Jazz scene in Burghausen, Germany for jazz tourists; particularly those visiting or interested in visiting Burghausen to take part in jazz courses, festivals and concerts.” Since our site is permanently under development or update, please bear with us as we progressively improve the site to provide all the information promised in that opening statement, as well as add to our collection of photos, art work and reviews of events.
We (the webmaster
and myself) decided to built this site for a number of
reasons. Firstly, because we had access to a lot of
information and material that nobody else was making use of,
at least not in English. Secondly, because we felt there was
a need and interest for this information to be “put
out there” (and also because I was personally
interested in having all this information myself). And
thirdly, as an experiment in time and space to see if (and
how) we could do it in regard to our respective professional
obligations and abilities, and the situation at hand. As you
browse through the many sections you will eventually find
pretty much all the information, or links to information,
that you could possible need as a foreigner coming to this
area for the first time. And if you wish to take the time,
you can read my version of events leading up to
the creation of this site, reports of the various musical
events I attend, or CDs that I review. Or you
can just relax and enjoy looking at the photos of Burghausen, a
beautiful little Bavarian town. Thank you for your
interest in Burghausen and Burghausen Jazz.. Happy surfing
Navigating the site
By clicking on the linked sections on the Main Menu page you will be able to explore our extensive coverage of the incredible Burghausen Jazz scene as well as access all the information you could possibly need to make an agreeable and exciting visit to this thriving Jazz Oasis.
The amount of jazz events going on in Burghausen simply boggles the mind. Therefore, I have tried to break down the various aspects of the Burghausen jazz scene into categories which I will progressively develop and fill out.
As you can see on the Main Menu page, there is a selection of themes with links which take you into various different sections. Now you can just go to any of the particular sections that interest you and get the information you wish or you can start with Burghausen Jazz Story and follow me down the rabbit-hole as I tell the story of how I discovered Burghausen and the Burghausen jazz scene and how it all began (See link below).
To make it a little more simple I have sorted the sections into the Burghausen Jazz Scene sections first and everything else next. In General Information About Burghausen, you will find links to everything from hotels and car rentals to bank cash points, as well as links to Burghausen Tourist Office in English and to several sites with good articles on the history of Burghausen.
Once you get to know our site you might periodically check
the What’s News? section to get an update on
what’s happening, what’s been going on or what
is coming up. I hope you enjoy the trip.
About us (the site builders)
Allow us to introduce ourselves
John Doyle, Site Manager
Psychologist, business consultant, writer, editor, journalist, music-lover and sometimes conga player
I guess I should advise you from the beginning that I am, more or less, a Gonzo style journalist and that navigating this site is also a trip through my experience of the Burghausen Jazz Scene.
What is Gonzo journalism?
I think before reading my long-winded attempt to explain the term myself, you could first go to Wikipedia who has an excellent page on the subject. Gonzo journalism
Anyway, in Gonzo journalism or reporting, the journalist is not just objectively relating a series of observed events or phenomena, but including his/her own experience of events in the story. Normally, in the sense of an ongoing situation, the observer reporter (the outsider) is the least important person in the situation he is reporting, even though he is none the less a participant in a given situation. But in Gonzo reporting you get to kind of “play along” and, like in jazz, you might even get to do a solo. In other words, your subjective interest in the story (either as a participant, reporter or observer) helps the sense of the story to form itself. Ultimately, in spite of being a Gonzo journalist, this site is not about me but rather about all the great people in the story (musicians, fans, participants and organizers) and all those I have come in contact with in order to discover and participate in the story of the incredible Burghausen jazz scene. One might say that a Gonzo article is more like a letter from a friend describing his experience of an event or situation as compared to a factual, objective recounting of events as in classic journalism. Maybe in the end we could say that Gonzo is like truth told in the manner of a fictional narrative, sometimes in the first sometimes in the second person.
I was once an investigative journalist in a distant emerging nation where I was covering topics like political corruption, conflicts of interest and collusion between secret services and criminal organizations, and people were getting blown away (killed) every day. I even stopped driving my car because the fear of turning on the key and going “boom” stressed me out too much (I left it parked so long it began to rust out and some gypsies eventually took it away). I remember walking in to the main entrance of a big hotel with a friend for a film-festival party and we had to walk around some bodies and police with machine guns standing all around to get in, but nothing to get excited about (it was a great party, by the way).
Was it dangerous? Probably. Was it exciting? Oh, yeah.
William Halliburton, Webmaster
Webmaster, Programmer, Jazz fan
Hello from the Webmaster.
I've been sitting in front of one of these machines and programming for over 25 years now, from military robots, to phone switchboards, to video camera, to giant factory machines, and most recently internet websites, and I am just about ready to launch a really cool startup called Kloudshare.
My friend John and I met on a beautifully sunny day in Saltzburg
while I was over working for an Austrian company on the first day of a
two week holiday. I had planned on driving down to Italy; well, plans
change and next I know, we're adventuring all around Burghausen at
festival time, relaxing in the park in Vienna, and celebrating art
gallery opening in Bratislava. The dialogue has just kept on rolling.
Burghausen Jazz Story
Jazz Scenes and Stories
Since I have been lucky enough to travel a lot in my life and have been a jazz fan for most of it, I have had the chance to check out my share of jazz scenes in the world, particularly in the USA and Europe. One thing I have remarked about jazz scenes in my travels is that wherever you go they are slightly different and animated by a different group of people. In spite of the fact that jazz (like most music) is a universal language and there is a wide selection of internationally renowned stars, each country and town has its own individual gestalt and group of key actors, personalities or players animating the scene - the people who live, work and play there. Naturally, in the eyes of the jazz fan, these people are usually the musicians, but one must also consider the promoters, club owners, festival managers, journalists, writers, jazz critics and so on. Usually, the bigger the town the bigger the jazz scene and range of players, but in Burghausen the jazz scene is disproportionally large in relation to its population of about 20 thousand permanent residents. They even have their own big band.
On arriving in Burghausen I was fortunate enough to have a friend who had been one of the key players in the very beginning of the Burghausen jazz scene and who was able to inform me as to who was who and who I should meet if I wanted to know something more about the Jazz scene here. But it was, alas, not going to be as easy as it would seem.
“Why ” I wondered. I mean why did such an incredible jazz scene develop in this particular place? I began to think that this was either a question that no one had previously bothered to ask or that once the scene had started no one thought of looking back, it was just straight on. Anyway, as a one time investigative journalist my curiously was piqued, I wanted to understand the phenomenon, I wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty or nuts and bolds of how, why and when it all started.
I also began to wonder why, even though Burghausen’s jazz scene is well known among musicians in Europe and to an extent in the whole world, little is written about it in the main jazz magazines or known by the general jazz public. A local hotel manager who had once worked on a luxury cruise liner told me. “You know, when I talked to the passengers and told them I was from Burghausen, nobody knew where it was - but when I talked to the musicians on board, they had all heard about Burghausen and its jazz scene and festival.”
So I slowly started doing a little research in my spare time, and after talking with my friend and listening to stories from other friends, I wrote the simple synthesis that follows:
“It would seem that the seeds for Burghausen’s great jazz scene (including a very well organized and increasingly well frequented annual jazz festival, the establishment of a jazz school and jazz courses, as well as many concerts throughout the year) were actually sown somewhere around 1968 within a small group of musicians who were meeting occasionally for concerts and jam sessions. From this modest beginning the Burghausen jazz scene grew and developed into what has become one of the most respected jazz programs in Europe today”. That seemed good enough and true enough at the time, as well as a simple way to sum it all up, but the real story goes much, much deeper than that. You know there’s a saying that reads, “Fools rush in where angles fear to tread.”
Well I ain’t no angel and I never intended to be anybody’s fool, so I figured compared to what I’d been into before, getting the real story of the Burghausen jazz scene shouldn’t be all that difficult, right? Wrong. Coming soon
- How I discovered Burghausen and the Burghausen Jazz scene
- How I came to live in Burghausen
- How I discovered the story of the beginning and evolution of the jazz scene in Burghausen up until today
- How I met the site’s webmaster and why we decided to make this site and
- How we are actually doing it
