Portraits of star musicians for the 50th Moers Festival

Frank Schemmann (center) has snapped pictures of musicians after their performances at the Moers Festival for the past 25 years. He captures them right after they come off stage, still heady with the applause. Their faces reflect joy, exhaustion or thoughtfulness. To celebrate the Moers Festival's 50th anniversary, his photographs are on show across town — outdoors, due to pandemic restrictions.

Herbie Hancock was waiting in the rain for the car to take him to the hotel after the sound check. Schemmann offered him his studio on the festival grounds while he was waiting — and got an exclusive photo shoot with the legendary jazz pianist. Hancock is known for his funk and fusion music. He always adapts the latest electronic technologies.

The Shibusashirazu Orchestra from Tokyo has been to the festival many times with butoh dancers like Hoshino Kenichiro. During the performance, the big band changed outfits several times. Of course, they stopped by Frank Schemmann's photo studio. Butoh is a modern Japanese expressive dance that originated in Japan in the 1960s as a counter-movement to the American musicals.

The double bassist founded the Tim Isfort Super8 project in 2004, a quirky octet that arranges and interprets songs from a wide variety of genres and plays them live to visual recordings. Isfort writes theater music and film scores and arranged for the German band Einstürzende Neubauten, John Grant and Tom Liwa. He has been director of the Moers Festival since 2017.

A "music worker with brute breathing" is what Schemmann calls Canadian jazz musician Colin Stetson. From bass saxophone to French horn, he plays all wind instruments. He prefers to let the instruments take precedence, as in the above photo. Stetson has been a guest in Moers several times and fascinates the photographer every time.

You have to wait for Cassandra Wilson because she vanishes into her dressing room right after a performance, Schemmann says. So he simply waited, and the US jazz singer finally dropped by his studio in 2016. It was an incredibly intense moment, recalls Schemmann, a fan of her spirited blues voice.

Moon Hooch is an American band from Brooklyn, New York City. Wenzl McGowen and Michael Wilbur are famous for their dance music based on saxophone and percussion. In 2016, they rocked the Moers stage before Schemmann captured that energy in a photo after their performance.

Radio Kinshasa singer and performer Strombo is always on the lookout for new sounds. The band played in Moers in 2017 after lengthy negotiations with the authorities to grant visas to the group's four musicians from Congo. Their music played from instruments made of plastic waste had the crowd go wild.

Chilly Gonzales likes to break with conventions. The Montreal-born musician studied classical music, jazz and composition. Gonzalez, who fills concert halls with his piano improvisations, likes punk, and sometimes raps instead of singing. The performance artist likes to involve the packed audience, including the occasional stage dive and crowd surf.