Double concert: George Dumitriu Hazard Ensemble + Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka

And another collaboration with the "Unsound" festival in Kraków, at least half of it. Languoria", the joint project by Danish ambient electronica artist Sofie Birch and Polish vocalist Antonina Nowacka, is also on the program there. However, only one day after the gig at Enjoy Jazz. The two musicians met at the "Unsound" festival in 2021 when they played an improvised live set. At 2 o'clock in the morning. In the winter of 2021/22, the two musicians met in the studio in København to work on the tracks for "Languoria" in eight days, which is to be released in time for the concerts in October. In an interview, Birch explained the importance of free spaces and the indeterminate in her music: "The improvisational element is important to me. I also want to share this vulnerability, the human and organic nature of the music with the audience." If some use the term "new age" to describe this spiritual element in Birch and Nowacka's music, the answer is that the development was more of a discovery than a plan. A "mindfulness", if you want to call it that, also characterizes the specific spatial understanding of the George Dumitriu Hazard Ensemble, which Enjoy Jazz is presenting together with KulturTandem and North Sea Round Town. The sextet around violinist, guitarist and violist George Dumitriu, who comes from Romania but lives in Amsterdam, creates spatial soundscapes to a certain extent by having the musicians move around within the concert space and allow the various sounds to take effect. This creates a dramaturgy of waiting, because it is more about something-not-doing than about doing. Dumitriu comments that precisely this "waiting" is something that tends to be avoided in real life beyond the concert experience. The Hazard Ensemble is about improvising and exploring the acoustic possibilities of a specific space. You might imagine a mixture of Bohren & Der Club of Gore, The Necks and Jan Gabarek feat. The Hilliard Ensemble. The two acts in this unusual double concert can thus be understood (and heard!) as different but complementary and communicating concepts of ambient music with a spiritual approach.

George Dumitriu Hazard Ensemble in cooperation with KulturTandem and North Sea Round Town

Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka in cooperation with Unsound Festival Krakow