Events

Artist Talk & DJ Set with Iñaki Bonillas and Maxi Broecking On Saturday, October 1, there will be an artist talk and DJ set with the outstanding Mexican photo artist Iñaki Bonillas, this year's partner of Enjoy Jazz's artist cooperation for the festival poster, at the Heidelberger Kunstverein. The event will be hosted by the director of the Heidelberger Kunstverein Søren Grammel, who together with Enjoy Jazz festival director ...

Tradition and modernity. In these thoroughly frustrating backlash times, the opening concert of the current festival year sets a decided counterpoint. Sona Jobarteh is the first female kora player in West Africa. The kora is a harp instrument with 21 strings that looks back on a long tradition. Usually, the griot instrument is played exclusively by men, who pass on the playing technique to their sons. In this respect, Sona Jobarteh's older brother ...

"Good News from Africa" is a legendary album title of the South African pianist, composer and activist Abdullah Ibrahim, whose name was Adolphe Johannes "Dollar" Brand before his conversion to Islam. Born on 9 October 1934 in Cape Town, Abdullah Ibrahim is probably Africa's most influential jazz musician. Those who may remember the great concerts with Hugh Masekela and Larry ...

Angel Bat Dawid, who describes herself as a clarinetist, composer and "spiritual jazz fortune teller", is clearly a busy woman. She runs a record shop on Chicago's South Side, organises interdisciplinary events with the Participatory Music Coalition and often sits in with various musicians in Chicago's music venues. She even wrote an opera last year inspired by the Song of Solomon, with dancers, ...

It was a celebration: three years ago, Kokoroko performed at Enjoy Jazz for the first time, and the Alte Feuerwache had wisely dispensed with concert seating - no one would have been able to keep their seats. What trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey and guitarist Oscar Jerome had in mind when they founded Kokoroko: a completely contemporary form of the music once played by Fela ...

As is well known, the past two pandemic years were a pretty lean and hard time for professional musicians. But also for young talents, especially pupils playing together in bands, it couldn't have gone worse: Not much was possible; lessons and joint rehearsals - like so much else - fell victim to the various Corona waves. All the more pleasing that ...

Attention, legend! Alive! One would like to play Hideaki Ishii a.k.a. DJ Krush Tom Liwa's "cover story versus full page ad". The beginning: "Hey dude! Wouldn't have thought ...". Hey dude! Wouldn't have thought that the peculiar mix of hip-hop, trip-hop, jazzy ambient breakbeats that landed you on James Lavelle's mega-hip "Mo' Wax" label in the mid-1990s would carry you into the second decade of the ...

It's hard to believe! On 4 March 2022, Jan Garbarek, the seemingly ageless man, celebrated his 75th birthday. To mark this occasion, but not only, the year 2022 will be marked by an extensive live presence of the highly popular Jan Garbarek Group, which has been on the road in changing formations since 1979. Inspired by John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon, Garbarek developed a ...

A short excursion into the "Time Tunnel": In March 2012, the Berlin quartet Schneeweiß und Rosenrot won the New German Jazz Award at the Alte Feuerwache with the kind of pop music that only jazz musicians can play. In the spotlight at the time: singer Lucia Cadotsch and pianist Johanna Borchert. Back then in the background: the Swedish bassist Petter Eldh and the drummer Marc Lohr. ...

For a long time, the (legitimate) media hype about the new wave of Brit jazz concentrated on the highly creative London scene around the "Tomorrow's Warriors" music collective, represented by musicians like Shabaka Hutchings, Mose Boyd, Nubya Garcia and Theon Cross. The compilation "Kaleidoscope. New Spirits Known & Unknown", which pointed to comparably productive indie jazz scenes in ...

Saxophonist, arranger and poet Alabaster DePlume is one of the most amazing blossoms in the motley portfolio of Chicago hipster jazz label International Anthem. While labelmates like Irreversible Entanglements, Jaimie Branch, Makaya McCraven, Ben LaMar Gay or Angel Bat Dawid inject much-needed fresh energy into improvised music with a wide variety of concepts and strategies, Angus Fairbain, originally from Manchester, understands his music more ...

In connection with Tord Gustavsen's work and especially his new trio album "Opening", the term "relaxed" is often mentioned. However, anyone who wants to understand this as a synonym for "thoughtful" or even "harmless" is barking up the wrong tree: relaxed is rather another word for freedom, for the sovereign handling of the available means, for an opening towards the ...

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Alessandro Bravo is no stranger to Schwetzingen. Years ago, Manfred Kern from the Schwetzingen Jazz Initiative heard the Italian pianist at a festival in Umbria and got to know and appreciate him. Invitations to the Kurpfalz followed; but now he is coming to the Jazztage for the first time as part of Enjoy Jazz - with a band that has it all. With ...

A long, long time ago, the jazz critic with the exalted-sounding name George O. von Frank once listed some characteristics by which one would recognise a jazz vocalist. At the top of the list is respect for melody and text. This is followed by a feeling for rhythm, intonation and phrasing. Good taste is also necessary in the selection of ...

Ticket reservations via Enjoy Jazz exclusively by phone from Monday - Friday at 06221 6470420. If that's not a well-rehearsed team: drummer Erwin Ditzner and saxophonist Lömsch Lehmann, two heroes of the regional scene, have known each other for ages, played together in the Mardi Gras Big Band and in various other constellations. And for years also again and again as a duo, which has the bandwidth ...

Bernhard Meyer has held a professorship for electric bass at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts since the summer semester of 2022. Meyer, born in 1983, studied at the Jazz Institute Berlin, where he completed a master's degree in composition with John Hollenbeck. Since his youth, he has pursued joint projects with his brother, the guitarist Peter Meyer. For his inaugural concert, Meyer will bring his ...

Those who had the great pleasure of witnessing Jaimie Branch's "Fly or Die" concert in Ludwigshafen's dasHaus last year now have some idea of the term "force of nature" or "bundle of energy": Branch is not only a brilliant composer and instrumentalist who knows how to use her means effectively and to the point, but also a somehow nervous-explosive entertainer. The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote of a ...

This duo has something extremely permeable, floating, almost delicate. When the vibraphone creates fragile, repetitive, rhythmic and at the same time harmonic patterns in the space, the soprano saxophone meanders almost filigree between the individual notes, sometimes awakening flute-like associations with Persian music, sometimes radiating something dance-like folkloristic. Being on stage as a duo offers freedom, and this is used to go far beyond ...

"Playing in this band is such a release for me, and I want it to be not only a release for us in the band, but also for the people we play for to experience that kind of catharsis. Like a weight is lifted off them," Buffalo-born Amirtha Kidambi once said in 1985. "When ...

Usually it is simple coincidences that lead to sensible constellations: Pianist Dominic J. Marshall, bassist Mulele Matando and drummer Sam Gardner met at the Leeds College of Music when all three enrolled in the African Ensemble there. At the end of their studies, however, the three instrumentalists parted ways - for the time being. Marshall founded his ...

People like to tell such stories as a bildungsroman. A hip-hop and grime producer with an immigrant background discovers jazz and global pop while searching for interesting samples. He becomes a fan of Miles Davis' music and then teaches himself to play the piano. In 2017, after two EPs, the debut album "Antiphon" was released, which sat between all chairs with verve. ...

The great fascination of the young British jazz community clearly has to do with its variety, multi-perspectivity and diversity: without the musicians who draw from their different migrant realities and incorporate diverse traditions from the countries of their parents or grandparents into their work, the English jazz renaissance would be inconceivable and only half as interesting. London is the powerhouse of this ...

Think big! Ever since Erwin Ditzner received a verbal commitment from festival director Rainer Kern for an annual carte blanche after an inspiring concert at Heidelberg's Karlstorbahnhof in 2008, the busy drummer has not let himself be left behind. Every year he surprises with exciting constellations that take place without rehearsals or agreements. Sometimes they only got to know each other in the evening ...

Formerly known as SEED Ensemble, Seed. is a Mercury Award nominated ten piece band led by alto saxophonist and composer Cassie Kinoshi. The band showcases an outstanding line-up of some of London's most up-and-coming young jazz musicians. West African and Caribbean influenced groove, Seed. explores a blend of genres through original compositions and improvisation. Their debut release Driftglass (Jazz Re:freshed, 2019) features the ...

Practice early if you want to become a finger-snapping great: Chris Thile elicited his first delicate notes from the mandolin at the age of five; at eight, the band Nickle Creek was formed as an ambitious family project; at 13, he recorded his first solo album, and in the following years there were a wide variety of collaborations that moved between bluegrass, roots music and folk, between Charlie Parker and ...

It doesn't happen all that often: A young man trains as a classical concert pianist, goes quite far, plays with various symphony orchestras - and then more or less suddenly decides to turn off in a completely different direction. Harold López-Nussa, born in 1983 in Havana to a family of musicians, is such a case. In his mid-20s ...

Sometimes the label is the lifeline when it comes to assigning an album its appropriate place in the record collection. After all, you want to be able to find what you've sorted out at some point. In this case, the label is called "International Anthem". So: jazz? In May 2018, the cornetist and multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay surprised the interested public with his album "Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun". ...

The exciting thing about retrofuturistic cocktails is the mix of ingredients. In the case of the duo Kit Sebastian, who hit the tracks in London in 2018, it's a complex composition whose ingredients don't quite seem to fit at first. Here's the recipe for "Anatolian Lo-Fi Samba": First, there are the somewhat obscure experiments of 1970s Turkish psychedelic rock. Tell them ...

The Comet is Coming to Destroy Illusions! The Comet is Coming to Summon The Fire! The Comet is Coming to party like it's after the end of the World! In the aftermath of the current apocalypse what sounds remain? Who will lead us to the Afterlife? Who will teach us to Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery? It ...

In an interview with Sussex Jazz Magazine, bassist Tal Gamlieli addresses the interesting question of how such an intimate connection between jazz and his native Israel could come about. His answer: Israel is basically a multicultural place, a young country, but with ancient traditions - especially when it comes to music and culture. Jews are ...

With his debut "Garden Path", released on vinyl in 2022 on the Heidelberg-based independent label MuZi (Musikzimmer), Christof Keller makes his first public appearance as a composer and arranger with an exciting fusion of jazz and electronica. The pieces, carefully curated by editor László Fehér, were arranged by Christof Keller with great attention to detail in a melange of ...

Sometime in the autumn of 2018, it was clear to (almost) everyone interested in improvised music that drummer and producer Makaya McCraven, the Paris-born son of a Hungarian folk singer and a US jazz drummer, was the "Man of the Moment" (The Wire). Referring, of course, to the release of the album "Universal Beings", which includes recordings from four different sessions in New York, Los ...

Alongside the harp, the vibraphone has emphatically secured renewed attention in improvised music of late. Not the only reason, but a weighty one, to be a guest at the Karlstorbahnhof this evening. The vibraphonist and composer Joel Ross, born in Chicago in 1995, studied at the Brubeck Jazz College with Stefron Harris. At 20, he ventured into the New York ...

The 62-year-old Youssou N'Dour has one of those voices that, once heard, you never forget. Those who hadn't already gotten to know him through the international hit "Shaking The Tree" recorded with Peter Gabriel in 1989, did so at the latest in 1994, when he sang a duet with Neneh Cherry, the daughter of free jazz pioneer Don Cherry and sister of Eagle-Eye Cherry, ...