Few of his generation have shaped free improvisation and world music as profoundly as Karl Berger. A trained musicologist, he emerged from the dim, post-war jazz scene in the South of Germany, where stationed U.S. soldiers fueled the music underground—until renowned American jazz musicians began forming their own bands there. But Berger wanted more.

Leaving behind a teaching assistant job with leading German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, meeting his mentor Don Cherry in Paris. The journey doesn’t stop there. Alongside his wife, Munich-born singer Ingrid Sertso, he follows Cherry and the great Ornette Coleman to Woodstock in the early ’70s. There, they build something legendary: the Creative Music Studio—a groundbreaking hub for free music and improvisation.