VELVET REVOLUTION & JELENA KULJIĆ

In the organizer's words:

Velvet Revolution has been Das Atelier's flagship project since 2015. The first two repertoires, "a short moment of zero G" and then "Won't put no flag out", composed by Daniel Erdmann, were played in over 80 clubs and festivals across Europe and signed by the BMC label.

The two CDs have been included in several rankings (Les Inrocks, Europe jazzmedia chart...) and have been awarded international prizes, including the German Record Critics' Award, CHOC Jazz Magazine. On its travels, the trio regularly invites other artists to join it (Vincent Courtois, Gerhard Gschlössl , Mikko Innanen and Jaak Sooäär). In 2017, percussionist Cyril Atef joined and new compositions were written especially for the quartet baptized Velvet Jungle.

For this new creation in 2025, Daniel Erdmann will invite Serbian singer and actress Jelena Kuljic.

Daniel Erdmann has often heard people say "Velvet Underground" instead of "Velvet Revolution". This led him to find the album "Andy Warhol" in his vinyl collection to rediscover this album with the German singer Nico as a guest. He found gentle yet haunting music, with simple songs and lyrics that deal with life situations that can affect anyone.

This listening inspired him to create a repertoire with a female singer, and this is the opportunity for him to work with Jelena again. With her particular approach, she will add an interesting layer to Velvet Revolution's sound, which like Velvet Underground is "soft but haunting".

Jelena's voice will take the band, who have been playing together since 2016, out of their comfort zone, she will push the band to create other spaces, both in the compositions and arrangements as well as in the improvised parts.

Inspired by the Velvet Underground & Nico record, this creation will combine music, lyrics and vocals.

The repertoire includes three cover versions of the Velvet Underground record:
"Sunday morning", "Femme fatale" and "I'll be your mirror", which will be arranged to take advantage of the special sound of the band Velvet Revolution, with a vocal range in the high mids that works heavily with the multiplication of eighth notes, creating harmonies that remain in a fairly narrow frequency range that leaves room for Jelena Kuljic's voice.

Another third of the repertoire is composed by Daniel Erdmann based on the texts suggested by Jelena Kuljic.

Finally, in order to create musical breathing space between the "songs", there will be three instrumental compositions that can act as a "link" or "counterpoint" to the songs with the texts. A more abstract part, in other words, to build up a uniform repertoire.

Jelena Kuljić- Voice
Daniel Erdmann- Saxophone
Théo Ceccaldi- Violin
Jim Hart- Vibraphone