Posted on: December 11, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Back in 1993 Munich’s Into Somethin’ crew started a clubnight entitled ‘Maiden Voyage’. The idea behind it was simple: while the successful weekly Into Somethin’ sessions set up by Michael Reinboth, Florian Keller and Theo Thoennessen in 1989 kept on providing a take on the current state of dancemusic from a Jazz DJ’s point of view the guys wanted to establish another night dedicated strictly to the classics. Jazz, Soul, Brasil, Boogie and Disco have been on the musical menu at Maiden Voyage ever since.

The kickoff and a handful of further sessions happened at the ‘Allotria’ before the Maiden Voyage crew moved to a place called’ The Loft’. Though the latter didn’t have too much in common with David Mancuso’s legendary living room it turned out to be a perfect spot for the following three years. Since ’97 the Maiden Voyage Nights have been happening at the Atomic Café, an intimate 60’s style Club in Munich’s downtown, for a variety of reasons. Any club where the owner himself regularly had more drinks by the end of the night than the DJ’s can’t be a bad choice…not to mention a mysterious golden cape, but that’s a different story.

However, Maiden Voyage became kind of a regular family reunion of Germany’s Jazz DJ alliance from the very start. Some of the nations finest DJ’s have been showing up over the past years to play 100% pure old school selections to a mixed crowd of musiclovers from all across the board. Rainer Trüby played his first ever guest-DJ gig at the Maiden Voyage opening night and joined the resident DJ crew straight away. Jazzanova’s Jürgen v. Knobloch has been playing frequently as well as Beanfield’s Michi Mettke amongst others.

Michael Reinboth and Florian Keller still love to play a set at Maiden Voyage every now and then but both guys left the ship’s bridge to concentrate on their variety of other projects in the late 90’s. Theo and Rainer were joined by Roland Appel of Fauna Flash, Trüby Trio and Voom:Voom fame instead to form the infamous threepiece that kept on keeping on ever since.

It’s been a long time coming but 14 years on from the opening night you hold the first Maiden Voyage compilation in your hands featuring 13 classic tracks from the soulful end of the musical agenda. The name ‘Maiden Voyage’ originates from Herbie Hancock’s ’65 Blue Note classic of course and there’s a quote from Herbie himself on the sleeve of his concept-album masterpiece which sums up the music on this compilation quite well, too: ‘This music attempts to capture its vastness and majesty, the splendor of a sea going vessel on its maiden voyage, the graceful beauty of the playful dolphins, the constant struggle for survival of even the tiniest sea creatures and the awesome destructive power of the hurricane, nemesis of seamen.’

I had the pleasure to play at Maiden Voyage several times over the years and it’s definitely one of my alltime-favourite sessions. Thanks, boys! Ship Ahoy!

Heiko ‘Hamburg’ Jahnke

Tracklisting:
01. Nohelani Cypriano “Lihue”
02. Roy Ayers “(Sometimes) Believe In Yourself”
03. Toto “Georgy Porgy” (Disco Version)
04. Raw Soul Express “The Way We Live”
05. High Energy “Lovin’ Fever”
06. Norman Connors “She’s Gone”
07. Xavier “Love Is On The One”
08. Diana Ross “Tenderness”
09. Cameo “Love You Anyway”
10. Hubert Laws “Land Of Passion”
11. Debra Laws “Very Special”
12. James Mason “I Want Your Love”
13. Alicia Myers “I Want To Thank You”

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