This is very different tp 2020 and 2021: in 2020, Covid and Lockdown shattered all dreams of a fantastic jazz festival with new ideas and financial resources from the Beethoven anniversary year. It was the same again in 2021, but Materna's team managed to move almost all the 2020 concerts into the autumn, making a kind of jazz festival possible, much to the delight of the artists and, of course, of the audience. In 2022, around 7000 jazz fans are now looking forward to a brilliant May and a return of the Jazzfest Bonn they are used to.

On the first of May, the festival will kick off in Bonn's opera house with Michael Wollny's chamber jazz. On 28 May, the jazz youth of the Jazzrausch Bigband and Toytoy X Salomea will rock the Telekom Forum, which is deliberately unseated and has the motto "Dance, dance, dance!"

The 12th Jazzfest Bonn gives us twelve evenings in May with a total of 23 individual concerts. At fairly short notice, a special was added to the programme: Under the motto "All that Jazz" there will be an encounter between the saxophonist Materna and his well-rehearsed piano partner Florian Weber on the one hand and the Beethoven Orchestra under composer and arranger Wolf Kerschek on the other. "Jazz around great classics - and more!" is the title of the evening. Kerschek's jazzy approaches to Bach and Mozart and symphonic approaches to Materna's "The Dancer" are among the works that will be heard.

The festival starts two days later. A few concerts are not yet sold out, and "it's always worth checking," says Materna, as there are waiting lists and there could be cancellations at short notice. "It's a lot of work to get the whole thing nicely on track now," says Materna, who had already presented a programme at the end of last year including legends such as singer Maria João, clarinettist Rolf Kühn, pianist Aki Takase or her colleague Jasper van't Hof.

There will also be stars of today, such as the pianists Michael Wollny and Tigran Hamasyan, as well as talents who we are going to hear much more about in the future: These include, of course, the musicians of the Jazzrausch Bigband, trumpeter Andrea Motis and the singer Alma Naidu.

There should be something for everyone. Friends of more classical jazz will most likely feel at home with the trio of the brilliant Swiss pianist Matthieu Mazué - or listen to pianist and singer Olivia Trummer, who has invited guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso to join her trio for one evening. "This is a treat," enthuses Materna, "I can warmly recommend it."

When it comes to insider tips, the name of the 26-year-old Catalan Andrea Motis comes up. She’s a star in Spain and South America, but still enjoys the status of being out of the ordinary here with her trumpet playing and singing. With her classy quintet, she shares an evening at the Pantheon with Cologne clarinettist Oliver Leicht’s wonderful ensemble.

Another insider tip is definitely the singer and pianist Alma Naidu (born 1995), who recently won the prize of the young Bonn Grizzly Foundation, swept away her audience at the Telekom headquarters and has in the meantime also presented her debut album, which is well worth listening to.

And where would the musician, saxophonist Materna go at the Jazzfest Bonn himself? "Difficult question", he says, "every evening has something". But one of the things that really excites him is accordionist Vincent Periani’s trio Jokers, with its interesting line-up of drums and guitar. "The guy is extremely virtuosic," Materna enthuses, "incredibly musical." As a saxophonist and fan of chamber music jazz concerts, the pianist Aki Takase’s and saxophonist Daniel Erdmann’s duos inspire him. And he's also looking forward to another saxophone colleague: "Dennis Gäbel thrills me every time I hear him."

The end of the festival is definitely a special adventure, with a brilliant jazz party in the Telekom Forum. On stage are the Jazzrausch Bigband, which has already made the auditorium dance twice at the festival and convinced the jazz community that swing and techno are not contradictions, and the formation Toytoy X Salomea, where, according to the programme, "The global sound of a new jazz generation unites with electronically influenced, loungy song landscapes". Here, the future of jazz is in party mode. Quite bold, speculative and certainly not unproblematic.

Materna: "You could get a glimpse of the future of jazz, if you’re willing to believe it could happen like this." The artistic director’s outlook explicitly includes the Pantheon concert on 27 May, which on the one hand presents the young singer Lucia Cadotsch with Liun + The Science Fiction Band, and on the other the trumpeter Frederik Köster and Rainer Böhm on piano, who are standing in for the Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet, which is unable to attend.

Materna loves this balancing act between intellectual and catchy music, is fascinated by the acceleration that music trends experience through social media, and the visual component that formations like Jazzrausch value. And he is curious to see what will become of Liun and Toytoy in about 15 years.