Hannes Zerbe has developed a remarkable concept for his Jazz Orchestra Berlin over the years of its existence: In addition to his own arrangements, he continually seeks a connection to classical music, creating a fluctuating exchange between two seemingly incompatible musical concepts.

Zerbe has done this before in the production Eisleriana (JHM 211), his homage to the great composer Hanns Eisler, and he is now doing it again with Heiner Müller Dances with Jimi Hendrix Polka, the latest production by the Hannes Zerbe Jazz Orchestra Berlin. The project was recorded at two concerts at the Berlin jazz club Schlot (2024) and the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum (2025). For decades Hannes Zerbe has been a charismatic performer with such outstanding improvisational musicians as Conny Bauer, Joe Sachse and Manfred Hering. He founded his Hannes Zerbe Blech Band in 1979, with which he performed material by Hanns Eisler, and then the Hannes Zerbe Jazz Orchestra Berlin in 2011.

The seriousness of Hannes Zerbe's arrangements - as we know from his close collaboration with Willem Breuker - is also very entertaining. He is able to guide both connoisseurs and inexperienced listeners effortlessly through his sound cosmos. In his current production, Zerbe has worked with texts from Heiner Müller and compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich and Jimi Hendrix, among others. He was fascinated not only by Hendrix's music, but also by his bizarre and haunting lyrics. These were spoken by the Berlin actress Heide Bartholomäus in Heiner Müller Dances with Jimi Hendrix Polka and then translated into German in a kind of adaptation. Hannes Zerbe has always been attracted to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich because of his original and light thematic ideas in his symphonies and his string quartets. The interaction between the musicians on this album create pure energy which can even be felt in the quiet moments. For this, Zerbe’s concepts raise the entertainment level in tandem with the seriousness. Zerbe reveals a stupendous compositional skill, using Jazz as a springboard to relate to music history through collective improvisation over defined structures.