Cologne Jazzweek: Open Sunday @ Stadtgarten

In the organizer's words:

Open Air

12:30 Süd Beat Big Band

The Süd Beat Big Band is one of the four big bands at the Rheinische Musikschule Köln. Although organized as a junior orchestra, new programmes are rehearsed and performed in public several times a year. Every January, for example, a senior school project takes place with the senior school choir of the Humboldt-Gymnasium in Cologne, which each time realizes a specific theme with new and mostly original arrangements. In the Beethoven year, for example, the works of this Bonn composer were reinterpreted with different approaches. However, this big band does not limit itself to just one style, but also performs modern styles in orchestral garb - for example, often hip-hop tracks or pop-rock songs. Live concerts with the Süd Beat Big Band are the strength of this up-and-coming orchestra - something the young musicians have already demonstrated on tours through China and Peru.

14:00 LoseThree

In search of their own musical identity, the trio LoseDrei delves deep into rhythmic structures. Complex patterns sound as natural as minimal music to the three musicians; angular structures and rugged forms in their compositions alternate with eloquent phrasing and the joyful art of improvisation. None of them are afraid of simple melodies without any great claim to innovation, and they often cross over into a space of sheer chaos. The repertoire was composed cooperatively by Xaver Feest (bass), Niklas Wittig (drums) and Lewin Losemann (saxophone); which sound fits into the now? What do we really play? How is it clear?: These are the questions that the trio asks itself - to end up as a sonic unit whose rhythmic strengths knock the audience off their feet.

Lewin Losemann - sax
Xaver Feest - b
Niklas Wittig - drums

15:30 Big Breeezy - Mumble Jazz

The young Cologne-based Victor Fox has named his quartet Mumble Jazz. He has formed it with himself on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet and the alto saxophonist Fabian Dudek plus a rhythmically agile rhythm section consisting of Roger Kintopf (bass) and Joshua Knauber (drums). The extent to which the German translation of the English verb "to mumble" could have played an onomatopoeic role in the naming of the band is as unclear as the answer to the question of why Fox called his alter ego Big Breeezy. Ultimately, this is completely irrelevant. The four young musicians play jazz that is completely committed to the present day, it is rhythmically impetuous improvisational music that knows no stopping - it is the soundtrack of the unjustly scolded Generation Z, for whom the hip hop of a Notorious B.I.G. is just as relevant as the free jazz of an Ornette Coleman or Eric Dolphy.

Big Breeezy - sax/bcl
Fabian Dudek - sax
Roger Kintopf - b
Joshua Knauber - dr

17:00 Karen Willems - Terre Sol Four

Karen Williams originally started her "Terre Sol" as a solo project with which the drummer and percussionist, born in Belgium in 1979, wanted to explore and reveal her real and imaginary roots. Her aim was to find music in which she could find herself as a spiritual being as well as a creative artist. She is concerned with the essence of her own work, the perception of her own personality and the further development of jazz as an art of fusing different aesthetics and genres. For the Belgian, jazz is also a communicative form of music that seeks dialog and discourse in order to discover new things and explore the unknown. This is why Williams has added a "Four" to her "Terre Sol" in order to set out as a quartet of four in search of the essence of contemporary, improvised music and to move sure-footedly along the borderline between jazz and improvised music, pop and rock, experimental music and musical avant-garde.

Karen Willems - dr/perc/voc
Maarten Flamand - voc/gtr/synth
Marc De Maeseneer - sax/bugel
Vincent Brijs - sax/fl

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Hall

12:00 The Erlkönig Project - Sounds of Geno vs. jazz house school

Since 2021, the Genoveva-Gymnasium in Cologne Mühlheim has been working regularly with the Open Jazz House School (OJHS) to offer students the opportunity to develop creatively and musically. "The Erlkönig Project", which was performed at Jazzweek, also shows how school, art and youth culture can go different ways at eye level. This musical piece with pupils from different years of the grammar school and lecturers from OJHS is a wild crossover of classical and contemporary music, an interdisciplinary and intercultural musical adventure that transforms Goethe's famous Erlkönig ballad into a modern sound collage. Using their own texts and sounds, themes such as loss, being at the mercy of others, social media and empowerment are dealt with and staged as a gripping mix of rap, sound experiments, Persian drums, drama and visual elements - polyphonic, multilingual, full of energy and with their own perspectives on timeless poetry.

14:00 Vehicle/Passenger

Vehicle/Passenger is a transatlantic trio featuring Cologne bassist Florian Herzog, New York drummer Lesley Mok and Amsterdam spoken word artist and saxophonist Marc Alberto. The three recently released "Live In Amsterdam" as a vinyl LP. It features six collectively improvised tracks, whose music only takes shape and form in the process of joint improvisation and which is acoustically grounded by the abstract sounds of modular synthesizers operated by Herzog and Alberto and is radical in its intention through personal expression. With the shimmering pulse and buzzing rhythms of Mok's drumming, the music begins to pulsate as if it were a living body. And when Alberto recites his poems, the setting of Vehicle/Passenger takes on an urgency and poignancy that one would not have thought possible.

Marc Alberto - poetry/sax/efx
Lesley Mok - dr/perc
Florian Herzog - b/efx

16:00 EROSÃO SEPTET

People had already heard of her when percussionist and composer Mariá Portugal, born in São Paolo, Brazil, became Moers' Improviser in Residence in 2020. That she is an instrumentalist who mixes (Afro)Brazilian rhythms and the song tradition of Brazil with jazz, improvised and new music with American and European influences. That she has developed the vocabulary for her own language with her projects. And that she not only studied drums, but also communication and semiotics. Erosão is typical of her way of working. The songs were written in Brazil, in the tradition of composers such as Caetano Veloso and Maria Beraldo. In 2019, she had these songs recorded by various musicians. She brought this material back to Germany, processed it further with analog and digital means and rehearsed it with a septet of Cologne improvisation artists. Each of these layers further eroded the music, ultimately transforming Portugal's songs beyond recognition.

Mariá Portugal - voc/dr/comp
Lotte Anker - sax
Angelika Niescier - sax
Matthias Müller - trb
Moritz Wesp - trb
John-Dennis Renken - trp
Reza Askari - b

More info on our website.

Price information:

Entry on a voluntary basis. Anyone who would like to give something is welcome to do so.