Eighteen‑year‑old Vera Brandes had not intended to make music history on the night of January 24, 1975. She planned only to put on a sold‑out concert at the opera house in Cologne, Germany. Article continues after advertisement Brandes had grown up in a house of music enthusiasts. Her father named Vera’s brother Julian Stefan so that he would have the same initials as Johann Sebastian Bach. When Vera was fourteen, a family friend who ran a jazz club in town overlooked the club’s age limit to let her in, and she became a regular. After she turned sixteen, her mother allowed her to attend the Berlin Jazz Festival; she got tickets that put her right onstage with the likes of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. She attended absolutely everything, including the hotel where all the radio journalists hung out. She was still sixteen when Ronnie Scott, a prominent British saxophonist, asked her to be his agent and arrange tour gigs. “I’m still going to school,” she told him.…