Jazz

A week ago, my good friends mentioned that they were going to a concert at Porgy’s because Virgil Donati was playing there. Naturally, that caught my attention. You’re sure to come across the name of this Australian drummer if you’re a fan of the harder or progressive branches of fusion. Alongside drummers like Mike Mangini, Marco Minnemann, Mike Portnoy, Gavin Harrison, and Anika Nilles, Virgil Donati is a highly sought-after collaborator for so-called “supergroup” projects—bands that systematically push the technical limits of musical instruments. As a rule, these are variations on metal and hard rock, because encoded in the DNA of these genres is a kick drum with the cadence of a machine gun and polyrhythmic orgies with so many beats that even a NASA supercomputer would have trouble processing them.

I enjoy attending shows like these, and they always leave me with different impressions. From my most recent experiences, I’ll highlight two contrasting ones: I was blown away by the band The Pineapple Thief (March 30, 2025, Szene Wien)—in which Harrison currently plays—and the compact, coherently powerful sound they managed to produce. In contrast, I was slightly disappointed by the supergroup The Aristocrats featuring Marc Minemann (May 4, 2026, Szene Wien). Musicians of the caliber of Guthrie Govan, Bryan Beller, and Marco Minnemann played exceptionally well, of course, but after an hour of acrobatic showmanship, I felt like I was watching YouTube videos of exotic solos with no added value. This is one of the biggest pitfalls of such projects, because music isn’t just about technical skill—or at least it shouldn’t be. Ensuring that the final product doesn’t devolve into a self-indulgent display of virtuosity is a challenge, and even for virtuosos, navigating these waters is very demanding.

A German band led by guitarist Jan Zehrfeld decided to stir things up around 2004. While in the early years much of it still revolved around marketing extravagance, their current hybrid of hard rock with a jazz sensibility is starting to pay off more and more. While I didn’t write reviews of the previously mentioned concerts (their ambition wasn’t to appeal to a jazz audience), Panzerballett has performed at Porgy on multiple occasions, and as we know, that’s an institution no jazz fan can overlook. A large part of the concert repertoire consisted of songs from their latest album, “Übercode œuvre.” In addition to the concert lineup of Jan Zehrfeld (who covers both the bass and guitar ranges with his multiscale 8-string Ibanez guitar) and Joe Doblhofer (guitar), Florian Fennes (saxophone), the album also features big names, including Marco Minnemann and the current star of the revived Canadian legend Rush: Anika Nilles.

I have to admit that I went to the concert on September 29, 2026, unprepared, and I had only a vague idea of what the music would sound like. After the first few notes, my expectations were met, but I was also pleasantly surprised. First off: everything you’d expect from such a high-octane supergroup will be delivered to you in spades. There’s opulence, mathematical precision, dizzying speed, fingerboard polishing, rustling shifts in rhythm, holographic synchronicity, and heart-stopping stop-times. At the same time, there are also trashy effects, hums, clusters of cosmic sonic smog, and, of course, the urge to obsessively nod your head while letting your long hair flow. But within all this dense sonic mass lies an element that legitimizes Panzerballett’s performance on the stage of a jazz club.

Jan Zehrfeld skillfully weaves jazz elements into both his original and adapted compositions—much like adding curry powder to a pot of goulash. If an amateur were to do this, it would be unappetizing, but these are professionals, and the result was a gastronomic delight. A dish like this probably won’t be part of your everyday menu, but it’s definitely worth a try. Moreover, a very refreshing element of humor creeps into that complex web of sounds and influences. Under normal circumstances, I would have written off the adaptation of Ode to Joy as a failure from the start, but these gentlemen managed to deconstruct that notoriously familiar melody in such a way that it became an amusing interlude in an evening full of surprises. Rarely is a band’s name as apt as it is in the case of Panzerballett. Although it’s a rather weak move on the part of a reviewer to resort to such analogies at the end of a piece, I can’t help myself: this German tank has taken on *Swan Lake*, and the result isn’t scorched earth, but a non-militant aesthetic experience.