NILS LANDGREN FUNK UNIT - 30 YEARS AND STILL ALIVE & KICKING

In the organizer's words:

We are so looking forward to the world-class soloist and artist with heart and bite: Nils Landgren. With his captivatingly grooving 'Funk Unit', the man with the metallic red trombone has been producing successful CDs and euphorically acclaimed concerts from Stockholm to Beijing - and Oldenburg! And as a singer, he has long since shown "where you can always hit the soul most reliably: right in the heart" (Die Welt).

When Nils Landgren launched his Funk Unit in 1994, the question could be heard: Who needs funk from Sweden?

Today, 30 years later, the world is a dozen albums and thousands of concerts richer in the grandiose-because-always-so-playful Funk Unit and a soulful band leader, nobody asks that anymore.

Because the answer is clear: if you want to hear the hottest European version of this music, which is inextricably linked with soul, rhythm, blues and jazz, you can't get past this band. Even the pioneers, godfathers and grandees of the scene were won over: whether James Brown's musical masterminds Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, or Ray Parker jr. and Joe Sample from the Crusaders, they all took part in the Funk Unit! And the mission is far from over.

Let's take a brief look back at the last great album by Nils & Funk Unit: FUNK is my RELIGION!

Among the people who are honored there with pieces is the great Esbjörn Svensson, who died so tragically and early, and who helped launch the Funk Unit back in the day - and for whom Landgren plays a wonderfully sad trombone melody "in memoriam".

And Landgren, the discoverer and producer of so many female singers, has always elevated strong women to title characters. Here it is the young poet Amanda Gorman, "who impressed us all so much at Joe Biden's inauguration", and Kamala Harris, the first female, black and Asian American vice president, to whom he dedicates almost love songs in soul garb.

And that will be really important this year: a look at the USA as "the largest and most important democracy, whose pioneers I want to honor," as Landgren explains. But also, of course, as a country with musical roots: "Without my father's trumpet jazz and the soul records that my older brother played for me, we wouldn't exist. This tasty soup with many ingredients, this vital music."