Panel: Quo vadis Jazz

In the organizer's words:

"Perspectives for the future - gender, careers and new paths in the jazz scene"

With Donya Solaimani, Ryan Carniaux, Florian Anger and Gabriele Maurer.

Donya Solaimani is a singer, guitarist and composer who lives in Cologne and Berlin. Her music oscillates between pop, minimalism, indie and contemporary jazz. She likes short songs, big melodies and coriander on everything. At the age of seven, she wanted to start playing the accordion before her sister successfully convinced her to take guitar lessons instead. She played guitar and bass in many bands, but behind closed doors she wrote songs and dreamed of becoming a pop star. Donya studied classical guitar, jazz singing and philosophy in Berlin, Cologne and Copenhagen.

Gabriele Maurer works as a saxophonist, composer and teacher and is a volunteer member of the board of the German Jazz Union and the Federal Committee for Music of the German Music Council in Berlin. The multi-instrumentalist moves freely between different genres. Whether as part of Luise Volkmann's Free-Jazz Large Ensemble at the Cologne Jazz Festival, on tour with Philipp Poisel's pop production or with her own band act GABRIELE on various festival stages across the country: Infectious enthusiasm and authenticity are her trademarks.

Ryan Carniaux was born in New York City and studied music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, majoring in jazz trumpet. He currently lives in Cologne and is professor of jazz trumpet at the Folkwang University of the Arts, where he is also head of the jazz department and teaches theory, ear training, ensemble and jazz history in addition to trumpet and improvisation. He has appeared on over 100 recordings and has recorded and toured with artists such as Bob Moses, Jerry Bergonzi, Misha Mengelberg, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Globe Unity Orchestra, Wolfgang Lackerschmid, Mark Egan and many others. Carniaux has released seven albums as a band leader and composer and performs regularly in Europe and the USA.

Florian Anger is a drummer, composer, arranger and bandleader, originally from the Erzgebirge. After his instrumental training in classical percussion and pop drums, he is currently studying jazz and popular music at the HMDK in Stuttgart with Eckhard Stromer, Rainer Tempel and Fabian Arends. Together with his long-time percussion duo partner Samuel Joseph, he founded the band "Searching for Home" in 2016, which still exists today and won the Sparda Jazz Award and the Jazzfruit in 2023, among others. He regularly composes and arranges for the large ensemble and is also responsible for booking and release management. He also works as a sideman in various projects in the Stuttgart jazz scene, as a musical drummer at the WLB Esslingen and as a teacher at the Musikverein Weilimdorf.

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Presented by Dr. Michael Köhler, born 1961 in Düsseldorf, trained as a bookseller, employee, studied German and philosophy, M.A. 1988, doctorate Dr.phil. 1991, since 1997 freelance author and presenter at Deutschlandfunk (among others) in the field of culture.

Presented by the Sparda-Bank West Foundation.