"club h", invitation card 1966
Besides the steady formations „Alfred Harth’s New Orleans Band“ (1965), "Alfred Harth Jazztett" (1966) and „just music“ / „New Thing Orcestra“ (1967-1972) following formations had performed at the „club h“ in Frankfurt/Main-Ginheim : „Jo Flinner Group“ (Jo Flinner, Gerhard Bitter...), “Modern Jazz Trio“, “Modern Jazz Group Wiesbaden“ (Michael Sell, Dieter Scherf, Gerhard Koenig, Wolfgang Schlick) and following musicians: Tony Scott, Joe Viera, Glenn Ragland a.m.o.
Within 1966 Lps of Ayler & Giuffre had changed my musical mind along with visits at avantgarde galleries. This triggered a mutation from Club H, 1965-66, home of the Alfred Harth Jazztett, to the centrum freier cunst, 1967-68, home of Just Music & Arts. In 1966 I changed from the Wöhlerschule to the art course at the Goethe Gymnasium.
Last not least the critic, radio jazz channel director and Frankfurt Jazzfestival director Dr. Ulrich Olshausen attended many concerts and wrote an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the scene at the "centrum freier cunst" in 1967.
Alfred Harth
In 1965, Alfred 23 Harth (A23H) established the club h—renamed centrum freier cunst around 1967—in his former rehearsal spaces in Frankfurt am Main. This self-created venue, with its atmospherically painted brick walls in blues, reds, and dark tones, stage lighting set in indirect glow, and candlelit ambiance, provided a unique environment that contrasted sharply with the more traditional jazz stages of the city. Concerts took place in the “großer Raum,” while adjoining spaces housed a bar and, later, a small gallery. Posters for the events, designed and often hand-made by Harth himself, reflected the same experimental ethos and appeared in highly varied and distinctive versions.
The programming at centrum freier cunst offered at least one event each month, while the place otherwise continued to serve as rehearsal space for A23H’s ensembles. Against the backdrop of 1960s Frankfurt—a city celebrated as Germany’s jazz capital yet tightly guarded by figures like Albert Mangelsdorff, who resisted admitting younger musicians into the scene—Harth’s initiative functioned as both a provocation and a necessity. The name itself, deliberately misspelled with irony, echoed similar gestures of resistance as with the Free Jazz Group Wiesbaden, which despite being Frankfurt-based, adopted the neighboring city’s name as a wry marker of independence.
From this fertile base, Harth launched his free music group Just Music, which from 1967 on carried its uncompromising sound across Europe, appearing in Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Munich, San Sebastián, Bremerhaven, Přerov, Prague, Paris, Avignon, Bilzen, Breda, Ghent, Wrocław, Kraków, Brussels, among others. Just Music remained open to collaborations, engaging in radio sessions, festivals, and interdisciplinary projects with a circle of musicians at the forefront of European free improvisation. These included trumpeter-composer Michael Sell, saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, bassist and tubist Peter Kowald, drummer Paul Lovens, bassist and later ECM founder Manfred Eicher, Czech flutist Jiří Stivín, Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert, Belgian pianist Nicole Van den Plas, members of Chicago’s AACM, as well as Sven-Åke Johansson, and many others.
The Frankfurt centrum freier cunst predates by a year Conrad Schnitzler’s Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin, with which it shared a spirit of artistic provocation and architectural improvisation. Both institutions stood as autonomous counterpoints to the rigid, closed hierarchies of the postwar jazz establishment, forming hubs of experimentation where music, visual culture, and social critique converged.
"club h", invitation card 1966
Besides the steady formations „Alfred Harth’s New Orleans Band“ (1965), "Alfred Harth Jazztett" (1966) and „just music“ / „New Thing Orcestra“ (1967-1972) following formations had performed at the „club h“ in Frankfurt/Main-Ginheim : „Jo Flinner Group“ (Jo Flinner, Gerhard Bitter...), “Modern Jazz Trio“, “Modern Jazz Group Wiesbaden“ (Michael Sell, Dieter Scherf, Gerhard Koenig, Wolfgang Schlick) and following musicians: Tony Scott, Joe Viera, Glenn Ragland a.m.o.
Within 1966 Lps of Ayler & Giuffre had changed my musical mind along with visits at avantgarde galleries. This triggered a mutation from Club H, 1965-66, home of the Alfred Harth Jazztett, to the centrum freier cunst, 1967-68, home of Just Music & Arts. In 1966 I changed from the Wöhlerschule to the art course at the Goethe Gymnasium.
Last not least the critic, radio jazz channel director and Frankfurt Jazzfestival director Dr. Ulrich Olshausen attended many concerts and wrote an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the scene at the "centrum freier cunst" in 1967.
Alfred Harth
In 1965, Alfred 23 Harth (A23H) established the club h—renamed centrum freier cunst around 1967—in his former rehearsal spaces in Frankfurt am Main. This self-created venue, with its atmospherically painted brick walls in blues, reds, and dark tones, stage lighting set in indirect glow, and candlelit ambiance, provided a unique environment that contrasted sharply with the more traditional jazz stages of the city. Concerts took place in the “großer Raum,” while adjoining spaces housed a bar and, later, a small gallery. Posters for the events, designed and often hand-made by Harth himself, reflected the same experimental ethos and appeared in highly varied and distinctive versions.
The programming at centrum freier cunst offered at least one event each month, while the place otherwise continued to serve as rehearsal space for A23H’s ensembles. Against the backdrop of 1960s Frankfurt—a city celebrated as Germany’s jazz capital yet tightly guarded by figures like Albert Mangelsdorff, who resisted admitting younger musicians into the scene—Harth’s initiative functioned as both a provocation and a necessity. The name itself, deliberately misspelled with irony, echoed similar gestures of resistance as with the Free Jazz Group Wiesbaden, which despite being Frankfurt-based, adopted the neighboring city’s name as a wry marker of independence.
From this fertile base, Harth launched his free music group Just Music, which from 1967 on carried its uncompromising sound across Europe, appearing in Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Munich, San Sebastián, Bremerhaven, Přerov, Prague, Paris, Avignon, Bilzen, Breda, Ghent, Wrocław, Kraków, Brussels, among others. Just Music remained open to collaborations, engaging in radio sessions, festivals, and interdisciplinary projects with a circle of musicians at the forefront of European free improvisation. These included trumpeter-composer Michael Sell, saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, bassist and tubist Peter Kowald, drummer Paul Lovens, bassist and later ECM founder Manfred Eicher, Czech flutist Jiří Stivín, Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert, Belgian pianist Nicole Van den Plas, members of Chicago’s AACM, as well as Sven-Åke Johansson, and many others.
The Frankfurt centrum freier cunst predates by a year Conrad Schnitzler’s Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin, with which it shared a spirit of artistic provocation and architectural improvisation. Both institutions stood as autonomous counterpoints to the rigid, closed hierarchies of the postwar jazz establishment, forming hubs of experimentation where music, visual culture, and social critique converged.