Barbara Dennerlein is an exceptional jazz organist. Few in the U.S. are familiar with her, largely because Dennerlein has toured here only sporadically. Born in Munich in 1964, Dennerlein began playing the organ at age 11 in a household where her parents loved jazz. She quickly became a master of the bass-note foot pedals and was soon playing concerts in Germany, appearing on TV there in the mid-1980s. Dennerlein remains a monster player. This live clip with Rhoda Scott from the Bern Jazz Festival in 2002 still rocks and speaks volumes about her playing...
Dennerlein has been recording since the early 1980s. I discovered her in 1995, when she released Take Off! on Verve with Joe Locke on vibes and Roy Hargrove on trumpet on various tracks. Here are clips of Dennerlein when she was just starting out:
Here's Dennerlein with German's WDR Big Band in 1984...
Here's Dennerlein a few years later with the Thilo Wolf Big Band...
Here's Dennerlein with guitarist Emily Remler and saxophonist Sonny Fortune in Switzerland in 1986...
And here's Dennerlein with drummer Andreas Witte playing Night and Day at the Jazzbühne Berlin '88" jazz festival in East Germany in 1988, a year before the Berlin Wall came down...
Bonus: Here's Dennerlein in the 2000s improvising on a J.S. Bach toccata and fugue at a Munich church...
