When he was working with musicians from Bon Iver, the National and Poliça during the city of Berlin’s free-form People Fests in the late 2010s, Alex Proctor was struck by the “openness.”
And yes, this was in the eastern part of the city that had been closed off from Western culture for three decades.
“Everyone seemed open to trying new things, appreciating new music,” he remembered.
A veteran sound engineer who has worked with those artists and more, Proctor is one of several creative forces involved in the small, low-lit but high-concept new Minneapolis music bar Berlin.
The 85-seat venue opens Wednesday in the historic North Loop warehouse building that previously housed Eric Dayton’s high-end clothing store Askov Finlayson. A well-known restaurateur is involved, and a lot of well respected Twin Cities jazz, electronic and none-of-the-above musicians are on the calendar.
Not so familiar a name, Rich Henriksen, Berlin’s owner, is a church musician and businessman who said he “just really wanted to spread my love of music” in the three-story, 1888-dated brick building he now owns.
“There are a lot of great attractions in the North Loop these days, but there isn’t a nice little jazz bar like this,” said Henriksen, whose claims review company Nokomis Health is housed above Berlin.
Henriksen, too, has his own happy stories of finding an “inspiring creative energy” in the city of Berlin in recent years. He listed off jazz venues such as Quasimodo, B Flat and especially the A-Trane as places on which he modeled his own Berlin.
