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| Photo © Falk Kulawik |
If, like me, you didn't know that Martin Luther (1483-1546), the founder of Protestant Church, had a role in the advancement of western music, then the concert Lutheriana, held at the Church of Jesus Christ in Berlin, would have a revelation, not only for its historical and musical lessons, but because of learning it the most cheerful way: the jazz way.
On February 11, in a bitterly cold Berlin evening, I skipped a Berlinale screening at the Potsdamer Platz and instead headed off to the quiet neighborhood of Dahlem to catch a concert by my friend Ekkehard Wölk who has contributed to this blog since it was started.
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| Ekkehard Wölk (Photo by Ehsan Khoshbakht) |
The occasion for the concert was the 500th anniversary of Reformation, when Luther, the rebellious monk from Thüringen in East Germany, nailed down his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Schloßkirche in the town of Wittenberg, condemning the oppressive practices of his times. That was not only the inception of, if I may borrow from John Coltrane, a "new thing", but also the beginning of many battles and bloodshed between the two major Europeans branches of Christianity. If these facts we all know, what we probably don't know about is Luther as the musician.
