Jazz musician Peter Brötzmann dies at 82

 

WUPPERTAL – Germany jazz musician Peter Brötzmann died on Thursday in Wuppertal at the age of 82, a spokeswoman for the city of Wuppertal told dpa on Friday evening.

Germany jazz musician Peter Brötzmann died on Thursday in Wuppertal at the age of 82, a spokeswoman for the city of Wuppertal told dpa on Friday evening.

Brötzmann is considered an influential representative of free jazz and was one of the few German jazz musicians to be heard worldwide.

The saxophonist performed with various formations throughout Europe and also had a large fan base in the United States with the band Last Exit and his Chicago Tentet.

Brötzmann liked to play his saxophone powerfully, radically and loudly – the best example of this was his second album “Machine Gun” from 1968.

Born in the western German city of Remscheid, Brötzmann learned the clarinet as a child and then studied art at the Werkkunstschule in Wuppertal. In the early 1960s he turned to free jazz.
He is one of the spiritual fathers of the internationally renowned Moers Festival. Besides music, Brötzmann also worked as a painter, graphic artist, designer and object artist.

In the course of his career, Brötzmann was awarded numerous prizes, including the Von der Heydt Culture Prize of the city of Wuppertal and in 2011 the German Jazz Prize for his life’s work.

It was not until 2022 that he received the German Record Critics’ Award. Brötzmann was “a personality and a unique specimen,” the jury’s statement said at the time.

“He broke with many conventions, but was never unforgiving in doing so. Provocative, unpolished, but also highly sensitive, he has gone his own way over decades and more than once turned people’s listening habits upside down.”