The visionary Austrian jazz promoter Hans Falb passed away on the 26th of December 2025, at the age of 71.
Nickelsdorf and LOFT regulars (2008)
(from left to right) Wolfgang Steppat, Bernd Lüssem, Jakob Blumenthal
Hauna opened the Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf back in 1976, and in 1980 he founded the Konfrontationen festival, which quickly developed into a center for free improvised music. For over 45 years, he was the host, listener, enabler, and troublemaker in the best sense of the word, and the festival program was never just a series of concerts, but always a state of being: a temporary space where musicians encountered each other, the audience, and themselves—without a safety net, without stylistic reassurance.
With his passing, European improvisational and avant-garde music has lost one of its most headstrong, alert, and persistent voices.
Unfortunately, I never managed to travel to Nickelsdorf to see the legendary confrontations, but numerous regulars and especially musicians have told me time and again about visits or performances there. In addition, our friend, the pianist Georg Gräwe, and also the drummer Paul Lovens lived in Nickelsdorf for a while.
The continued existence of the Jazzgalerie and the festival was repeatedly threatened, so in May 2008 we organized a solidarity concert at the LOFT to draw attention to the festival and its importance for the scene, and also to raise money for its continued existence.
From the announcement for Friday, May 30, 2008:
ô pintcha – don‘t stop // Kölner Konfrontation
Benefit concert for the Jazzgalerie in Nickelsdorf
For more than 30 years, the JAZZGALERIE NICKELSDORF has been known to music lovers around the world for its uncompromising role as a forum and laboratory for contemporary music. Countless club concerts and the KONFRONTATIONEN festival, which took place 28 times in a row, bear witness to this. Music history was written here and impulses were given that reached far beyond Austria’s borders.
Participants:
Peter van Bergen, Martin Blume, Eric Boeren, Peter Brötzmann,
Georg Graewe, Frank Gratkowski, Achim Kaufmann,
Thomas Lehn, Dieter Manderscheid, Magda Mayas,
Benjamin Weidekamp, Philip Zoubek
With his passion and tireless commitment to musical experimentation and cross-border art forms, Hauna succeeded in inviting world stars of the genre and establishing an international regular audience. For this, he will be remembered with gratitude not only by the fans of his festival and the musicians.
Requiescat in Pace, Hauna
Hans Martin Müller, on behalf of the LOFT and its friends