On the microphone: Michael Laages
It doesn’t always have to be Hamburg – Bremen, Braunschweig and Hanover are the life and career locations of the versatile saxophonist York Ostermayer. Bremen because he was born there; Braunschweig because he was part of the very successful “Jazzkantine” there for a while; Hanover because he has lived there for a long time. “York” was actually called “Jörg” and he adopted the beautiful surname when he married the actress and lecturer Christiane Ostermayer. The small, finely furnished studio is located in the house on Bonifatiusplatz in Hanover’s Liststadt, directly opposite the apartment on the first floor.
Ostermayer supplies music for Lessing production
York Ostermayer’s German-African project “Culture Clan” had a No. 1 hit in 2004 with the album “Africa”.
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Ostermayer has just left the small world to provide music for a production by drama director Matthias Gehrt at the theaters in Krefeld and Mönchengladbach. “Nathan the Wise”, Lessing’s classic of the Enlightenment, actually premieres tomorrow, January 29, 2022. On the one hand, Ostermayer’s path into music was due to his mother, who gave the 7-year-old boy a flute, which he didn’t know what to do with at first. And Radio Bremen took care of the rest, because in Ostermayer’s youth there was the program “Jazz rockt” at noon. The not-yet-flautist recorded the program with the cassette recorder and tried his hand at playing the first notes of the flute. The instrument was then too quiet for the first band and a Keilwerth alto saxophone from a household liquidation was added for 300 marks.
Memories flow into the work on “The SoulJazz Experience Vol.1”
Rock and jazz (and soul) always remained interesting, especially when mixed together. “Kaliber 38” was the name of one of the bands in Bremen. “Coconut” was later added in Hanover: “Every new band was a new school,” the musician recalls today. Meanwhile, Dexter Gordon and David Sanborn remained heroes. Countless memories have flowed into the work on “The SoulJazz Experience”, the most recent Ostermayer CD. And “Vol. 1” is under the title. So there will soon be more from Bonifatiusplatz – how nice.
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