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Black Forest Chateau
Some of the biggest names in jazz found their sound in a villa in the heart of Germany.
By Jim Irvin.
Oscar Peterson entertains the locals;
Producer Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer;
Monty Alexander (left) and Ernest Ranglin in the studio;
IN 1958, the co-owner of the German electronics manufacturer SABA, Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, an expert in sound equipment, accomplished pianist and knowledgeable jazz fan, built a recording studio in his villa in VillingenSchwenningen in the Black Forest region.
When Oscar Peterson came to Zurich to perform a concert in 1961, Brunner-Schwer invited him to his home studio, promising him the best sound he’d ever heard.
Peterson was indeed impressed by HGBS’s crystalline recording of the performance he gave at the house: “I never heard myself like this before…” He returned every year for similar events, making recordings which couldn’t be released commercially while Peterson was under contract to Verve, but which circulated nonetheless among connoisseurs.
In 1968, Brunner-Schwer left SABA to start his own jazz label, MPS, standing for Musik Produktion Schwarzwald, “Black Forest music productions,” but later advertised as “Most Perfect Sound”. In effect it became a German equivalent of Blue Note, a jazz label famed for its sound, in this case one of startling clarity, where pianos sparkle, hi-hats glisten and bass notes exude a warm pressure not apparent in lesser recordings.
Once word got around about the quality of the work coming out of MPS, major names in jazz – Dizzy Gillespie, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson and Jim Hall – began coming to Germany to record with Brunner-Schwer and he began to travel to visit them. Though he specialised in pianists – in addition to Peterson were Bill Evans, Count Basie, veteran Brit George Shearing and the playful Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander – he recorded all kinds of musicians. He was fond of jazz violinists Jean- Luc Ponty, Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris, the great Stéphane Grappelli and, from a younger generation, Didier Lockwood. He also, naturally, recorded the cream of German jazz players, among them Volker Kriegel, Wolfgang Dauner, and brothers Joachim and Rolf Kühn, plus artists from across the globe: limpid Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell, Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and crossover funk-meister George Duke, who became a label favourite.
In 1983, when the budgets for recording jazz had irrevocably dwindled, Brunner-Schwer switched to recording classical music, bringing the same quality to his HGBS label, and leased the rights to MPS to Polydor. Ten years after his death in 2004, Edel records took over the catalogue and now Brunner-Schwer’s son Andreas and long-time colleague Friedhelm Schulz head the team recording once again in Villingen. New artists include singers Malia and China Moses, Brazilian mandolinist Hamilton De Holanda, and the German trio led by pianist Julia Kadel, who were the first jazz artists to record in the villa in four decades.