Nick Mason at Berlin Jazz Festival 2007
Written by Simon Roberts   
Sunday, 04 November 2007

jazz fest berlin '07 In a recreation of his guest appearance as part of Michael Mantler's band on May 11th, 1984 in Cologne, and February 8th, 1987 in Frankfurt, Nick Mason journeyed back to Germany for another Mantler concert on November 2nd as part of the Berlin Jazz Festival.

With Nick again taking care of percussion in Michael's band, the event took place at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, and as Simon Roberts reports, the band couldn't help but honour Nick's presence with a bit of a classic Pink Floyd tune sneaked into an improvisation performed there...

The concert itself - recorded and later broadcast on RBB Kulturradio on November 4th - was very enjoyable although clearly not to the taste of quite a few early leavers - it was quite avant garde. The group performed the premiere of Mantlers work "Concertos". This consisted of several movements, each with a different soloist. Nick's involvement was the last movement. It included references to "Money" from the instrumentalists, alongside Nick's signature drum sound.

Nick looked nervous and got off to what sounded like a shaky start to me although once he got into a rock and roll groove he was fine.

There was a reprise of the Money parody as an encore.

A fun evening with some great playing and, at times, very beautiful music.

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