DVD Specs:
Video Format: DVD5
Picture Format: 4:3
Audio: PCM Stereo
Running Time: approx. 56 Min.
Region Code: 0 (No Region)
FSK: 0

A Meeting with friends
Memories of Volker Kriegel (1943 - 2003)
By Karl Lippegaus

His first record came out in 1968 and is entitled With A Little Help from My Friends. At a jazz festival in Dusseldorf five years earlier, he had won a competition for amateurs. With the American vibraphonist Dave Pike, he formed a band from 1969 to 1972 whose music kept echoing for many years. The guitarist and draughtsman from the Frankfurt jazz scene gathered a circle of friends with every new album. Like on November 8, 1981, when he presented a concert in Berlin titled Volker Kriegel & Friends. For that, he chose primarily new pieces that he had recorded for his solo album Journal (Mood Records) at the sound studio Zuckerfabrik in Stuttgart in August; only "Chateau Sentimental" originated from the 1978 album "House-Boat".

The core of Journal formed Kriegel's desired band from that time that he introduced at Metropol in Berlin to an enthusiastic crowd. When the all-young audience was demanding another encore, the guitarist stepped in front of the microphone for the first time and explained: "We are an occasional formation for this evening. We are only able to play this repertoire and that's it."

Of course, the term "occasional formation" was meant ironic. The motor of the Mild Maniac Orchestra was also the core of the band, Kriegel playing guitar and Thomas Bettermann from Dortmund with his whole arsenal of keyboards. In addition to that came three musicians for who the Darmstadt-born Kriegel had cherished a special admiration for years. It soon became clear that he had much fun to drift away from the heavily composed musical frame of the Mild Maniac Orchestra - into more relaxed regions of jazz allowing his friends a lot of space. "Chateau Sentimental" and "Schwebebahn" turned out twice and three times longer as their studio version, not least because of the soft power of the rhythm section. The according to Kriegel "honor.......
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