Events in and around Schwetzingen

Win­ter in Schwet­zin­gen
The Hei­del­berg The­atre and Orches­tra Baroque Festival

06.11.2021 — 05.02.2022

In win­ter 2021|22, the 15th edi­tion of the Baroque Fes­ti­val Win­ter will take place in Schwet­zin­gen. A rea­son to cel­e­brate! 15 years full of excit­ing encoun­ters with unknown opera rar­i­ties of the Baroque.

Year after year, the opera world looks for­ward to what the The­ater und Orch­ester Hei­del­berg presents in the Roco­co The­atre in Schwet­zin­gen, when a for­got­ten work is awak­ened from its Sleep­ing Beau­ty slum­ber after sev­er­al hun­dred years and can be expe­ri­enced for the first time by today’s opera lovers — year after year a unique expe­ri­ence that has retained its per­ma­nent place in the Ger­man cul­tur­al land­scape. Trans­lat­ed with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free ver­sion) On sev­er­al occa­sions, plays have been praised by the spe­cial­ist press as “redis­cov­ery of the year” and reports have been made world­wide about the rar­i­ties per­formed again in the Roco­co The­atre in Schwet­zin­gen. In addi­tion to the cen­tral work, which forms the cen­tre of each fes­ti­val edi­tion in a new pro­duc­tion, top-class con­certs pro­vide the set­ting and guar­an­tee first-class lis­ten­ing plea­sure in the premis­es of the elec­toral sum­mer res­i­dence, which has demon­stra­bly already been graced by famous guests such as Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Willibald Gluck and Friedrich Schiller.

The birth of the fes­ti­val in 2006 coin­cid­ed with the clo­sure of the Hei­del­berg The­atre, which was no longer playable due to con­sid­er­able struc­tur­al defi­cien­cies. Here a virtue was made of neces­si­ty and the Roco­co The­atre in Schwet­zin­gen act­ed as an alter­na­tive venue to pro­vide a tem­po­rary domi­cile for Heidelberg’s the­atre pro­fes­sion­als. Under the artis­tic direc­tion of the then opera direc­tor Bernd Feucht­ner with artis­tic direc­tor Peter Spuh­ler, the poten­tial of this mag­i­cal place was dis­cov­ered, ini­tial­ly to thrill audi­ences annu­al­ly with per­for­mances of var­i­ous oper­at­ic works from the pen of Anto­nio Vival­di. With the artis­tic direc­tor­ship of Hol­ger Schultze and artis­tic direc­tor Herib­ert Ger­me­shausen, the cycli­cal redis­cov­ery of var­i­ous Neapoli­tan opera works suc­ceed­ed after 2011. With the artis­tic lead­er­ship of the direc­to­r­i­al team Ulrike Schu­mann and Thomas Böck­stiegel, Win­ter in Schwet­zin­gen is ded­i­cat­ed to redis­cov­er­ing the works of Ger­man Baroque com­posers — begin­ning with the cel­e­brat­ed per­for­mance of Georg Cas­par Schürmann’s mas­ter­piece “Die getreue Alces­te” in 2019.

Win­ter in Schwetzingen

Whisky fair

11.–13.02.

The 8th Whisky Spring makes its way back to Schwet­zin­gen Castle.

For the 8th time, Schwet­zin­gen Cas­tle will be the whisky mec­ca in the Rhine-Neckar tri­an­gle in the won­der­ful ambi­ence of the baroque palace. This time the fair will be held as 2G (Vac­ci­nat­ed, Con­va­les­cent) or 2G+ (Vac­ci­nat­ed, Con­va­les­cent PLUS Rapid Test). We will keep you informed about devel­op­ments & changes (see page “Covid-19”). The tick­et shop opens approx. on 15 Novem­ber 2021…

We will keep you updat­ed here & on Facebook!

Be there again when more than 1,200 dif­fer­ent bot­tlings will be on offer at our exhibitors’ stands (paid drams in 1cl and 2cl). Renowned importers, inde­pen­dent bot­tlers & traders from the region will be rep­re­sent­ed again.

Detailed infor­ma­tion is avail­able at Whisky Spring

John McLaugh­lin

03.03. — 20:00 Uhr
Alte Woll­fab­rik

Detailed infor­ma­tion is avail­able at After the acclaimed pre­mière con­cert last year, John McLaugh­lin starts his Euro­pean tour this year from the Woll­fab­rik in Schwet­zin­gen. A sign of how com­fort­able John McLaugh­lin feels here. The Briton is the great jazz vir­tu­oso of the gui­tar and is one of the few Euro­peans who were able to give deci­sive impuls­es to the devel­op­ment of jazz in the USA. He became famous with Miles Davis’ band, played with Paco de Lucia and Aldi Meo­la and, as co-founder of one of the most impor­tant fusion bands ever, “The Mahav­ish­nu Orches­tra”, trig­gered a musi­cal earth­quake with the debut album “The Inner Mount­ing Flame” in 1971. Rolling Stone mag­a­zine has long since list­ed him among the 50 or 100 best gui­tarists. In 2018 he was award­ed a Grammy.

His band “The 4th Dimen­sion” is the result of years of col­lab­o­ra­tion with var­i­ous musi­cians from dif­fer­ent cul­tures and musi­cal tra­di­tions. The music of this group unique­ly inte­grates all these cul­tur­al influ­ences while retain­ing the spon­tane­ity of jazz.

Alte Woll­fab­rik

Stan­ley Clarke

28.04. — 20:00 Uhr
Alte Woll­fab­rik

One bass, four strings — that’s all Stan­ley Clarke needs to send his audi­ence into ecsta­sy. The mul­ti­ple Gram­my award-win­ning leg­end has been writ­ing music his­to­ry for decades. As one of the most impor­tant jazz musi­cians, he stands for much of what has made jazz-rock famous in the last 45 years: the eman­ci­pa­tion of bass play­ing, vir­tu­os­i­ty also on the elec­tric bass, the fusion of pop and jazz, Latin music and jazz, and the par­al­lelism of dou­ble bass and elec­tric bass.

On 28 April 2022, the thor­ough­bred musi­cian and his band will be com­ing to Schwet­zin­gen for the sec­ond time. After his bril­liant con­cert in 2019, the Gram­my Award win­ner won’t miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the Wool Fac­to­ry again. Born in Philadel­phia in 1951, Stan­ley Clarke moved to New York City at the ten­der age of twen­ty. Here he worked with numer­ous jazz greats and shaped an entire era with the band “Return to For­ev­er”… On bass, the cre­ative mas­ter­mind com­bines an inim­itable slap tech­nique with incred­i­ble vir­tu­os­i­ty. Whether on elec­tric, dou­ble or pic­co­lo bass — when Clarke gets going, it gets wild and funky. 

His cre­ativ­i­ty has been recog­nised and award­ed with gold and plat­inum records, Gram­my Awards, Emmy nom­i­na­tions and a BMT Award. He was also Rolling Stone’s first Jazzman of the Year and a ten-time con­sec­u­tive Play­boy Music Awards win­ner as a bassist. Clarke was hon­oured with Bass Play­er Magazine’s Life­time Achieve­ment Award and is a mem­ber of Gui­tar Play­er Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004, he was named one of the 50 most influ­en­tial peo­ple by Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine. In 2011 Stan­ley Clarke received the Miles Davis Award at the Mon­tréal Jazz Festival. 

Even after all these years, he has lost none of his stage pres­ence and ener­gy. He still knows how to make the crowd roar and the stage shake. Togeth­er with his band, he slaps and grooves his way through the pro­gramme and deliv­ers a show that is sec­ond to none. There are things that you sim­ply have to expe­ri­ence live. The con­certs of Stan­ley Clarke and his band are def­i­nite­ly one of them!

Alte Woll­fab­rik

SWR Fest­spiele “Arka­di­en”

29.04.–28.05.

The pro­gramme of the Schwet­zin­gen SWR Fes­ti­val 2022 will be pub­lished on Thurs­day, 25 Novem­ber, and advance tick­et sales will begin on 6 December. 

SWR Clas­sic

Musik im Park
Konz­erte im Schlossgarten

28.07. Toto “40 Trips around the sun”

30.07. Sarah Con­nor “Herz Kraft Werke”

04.08. Max Giesinger “Irgend­wann ist jetzt”

05.08. Kool & The Gang

06.08. Win­cent Weiss “Vielle­icht irgendwann”

Musik im Park

18. Clas­sic-Gala Schwet­zin­gen — Inter­nat. Con­cours d‘Elegance

02.–04.09.

Clas­sic Gala

NIEDECK­EN liest & singt BOB DYLAN

18.10. — 20:00 Uhr
Schloss Schwet­zin­gen

There is cer­tain­ly no oth­er Ger­man musi­cian who is as close to Bob Dylan as Wolf­gang Niedeck­en. For decades, he has been shap­ing Ger­man-lan­guage rock music with his band BAP and as a solo musi­cian, repeat­ed­ly engag­ing with the work of Bob Dylan:

In 2017, Niedeck­en set out on a jour­ney in the foot­steps of Bob Dylan on behalf of the TV chan­nel ARTE. He criss-crossed the USA, where he spoke with many for­mer com­pan­ions, pho­tog­ra­phers, jour­nal­ists and musi­cians who could pro­vide com­pe­tent infor­ma­tion about “Bob Dylan’s Amer­i­ca” (the work­ing title). His book is about this jour­ney. He writes about cross-con­nec­tions to his own biog­ra­phy and the points of con­tact with the his­to­ry of his band BAP, which has now exist­ed for 45 years. Above all, he talks about the great influ­ence Bob Dylan has had and con­tin­ues to have on his own work as a song­writer. From his road movie-like book, writ­ten in a con­ver­sa­tion­al tone, Niedeck­en reads select­ed pas­sages and plays the songs in ques­tion. It will be inter­est­ing to see whether the respec­tive sto­ries end up with a Dylan or a BAP song. Some­times he changes in the mid­dle of the song, from Eng­lish to Cologne, because there are his own cov­er ver­sions of many songs. Songs like “Songs sinn Dräume”, inspired by a sen­tence in Dylan’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy “Chron­i­cles”, are also on the set list: “Songs are like dreams you try to make come true. They are like for­eign lands that you trav­el to.” On mag­i­cal win­ter evenings, Wolf­gang Niedeck­en is accom­pa­nied by his long-time friend, the pianist, arranger and big band con­duc­tor Mike Hert­ing. The events take place in select­ed loca­tions and in com­pli­ance with coro­na reg­u­la­tions.

SWR1 events