Zig Zag Jazz Festival in Berlin
Ella Radio co-sponsors
By: Susan Hall - Jul 21, 2026
The Zig Zag Jazz Festival runs from July 20 to August 1 in Berlin. Zig Zag is often voted the best jazz club in Europe. The event is co-sponsored by Ella Radio (available both as an app and on the web).
The festival takes place at Gasometer in the Schöneberg section of Berlin. The skeletal steel structure spreads out 78 meters over the surrounding area. The giant tubular trellis is a mishmash of rusting beams and bars, held together by nuts and bolts, air and rivets, with nothing in between.
David Bowie used to live nearby on Hauptstraße, and Marlene Dietrich was born just around the corner on Leberstraße (then Sedanstraße). It’s the Rote Insel neighborhood, so-called because of its “red,” left-leaning workers.
Gasometer IV remained in service as a gas storage facility after the Schöneberg gasworks shut down, until it was decommissioned in 1995. Now it’s part of the EUREF-Campus, which is developing the area around the gasometer “into a real-life laboratory for the shift to renewable energy.” Its dome was redesigned to mark the 2006 World Cup, “inspired” by the Reichstag.
The space is large yet inviting. Out of the darkness, spotlights cast swirling clouds of light shaped like dancing figures. Zigzagging short lines dash across the background in rainbow colors, focusing attention on the stage, which is geared up for whatever the performers want.
Fusion started the first evening. The quartet was made up of Dave Weckl on percussion, Richard Bonner as MC and performer, Michel LeCoq on the synthesizer, and Ciro Manna singing with particular beauty and surprise.
Fusion here was not just a jazz style combining rock, hip-hop, et cetera; this evening was a fusion of artists from different countries—the US, France, and Italy. They had a happier fusion than Spain and Argentina the day before.
Richard Bonner led in English, introducing Michel LeCoq of France, Italian Ciro Manna, a hip-hop guitar-playing balladeer,and Bonner's fellow American Dave Weckl—a percussionist who speaks in familiar phrases and sentences, but creates unusually thick textures and completes his sentences with one or two subtle beats that are clear and sometimes humorous.
Dee Dee Bridgewater followed. Just listen to her Hound Dog if you don't know her. And if you can't make it across the pond, she’s at Carnegie Hall in New York on August 1.
Jazz at Gasometer is first-rate and fun.