Here comes a singer who defies categorization, who doesn’t want to sing the usual standards because “everything has been said”. That’s what she told me during our meeting on a late Sunday afternoon in a Kreuzberg café. But she does include one or the other better known song in her repertoire, albeit not really what…
International stars and members of the young German Jazz scene are among the artists programmed for the first ever Jazz Festival in Esslingen, near Stuttgart. On two full weekends there will be concerts, workshops, or a Jazz & Dining special. The Festival will run June 19th-21st and from June 26th to the 28th. The first…
Gina is getting ready here for her stroll through the Prenzlauer Berg Green Market where she usually collects her groceries, fish and meat for the week. She recently changed her diet to fresh meat and additional carrots, salad, cucumber, or parsnip with a dose of oatmeal and a little cotton cheese thrown into the mix….
There were many moments during singer Rumer‘s show on Thursday night at Neukölln’s Heimathafen where I was wondering if this voice was really coming from a human being. She sings like an angel, crystal-clear, with perfect pitch and flawless intonation and she writes songs in timeless and majestic Burt Bacharach style. Rumer is currently on…
Happy Birthday to the one and only Al Jarreau who is turning 75 today! The singer from Milwaukee whose latest CD is a dedication to his old friend and producer George Duke (“My Old Friend – Celebrating George Duke”, 2014), is still touring and I wanted to let you know where to catch him in…
For her third album, UK saxophonist and composer Trish Clowes was able to record three of her compositions together with the BBC Concert Orchestra under the direction of André de Ridder. The album is supposed to be about journeys and the adventure begins with “Radiation” which is, in fact, a pretty bright and luminous number…
The one-hour showcase concert was announced on a very short notice so that’s why this trio from Israel was playing before a half-empty room at A-Trane yesterday. Singer Irit Dekel, accordionist and pianist Eldad Zitrin and drummer and percussionist Elat Cohen Bonen are interpreting well-known standards in a quiet unusual way, not only because of…
Born in New York, raised in Croatia, singer Thana Alexa delivers her debut album “Ode To Heroes”. Thana, who took voice lessons at the Rock Academy of Zagreb and later enrolled at the New School in New York, is paying tribute here to her influences, by either covering standards or by writing her own, distinguished…
Jill Scott, Xavier Naidoo, David McAlmont and Max Mutzke on one album? German trumpet player Nils Wülker makes it happen. The 37 year old musician is probably best known for his music for the pretty popular “Space Night” in German TV and back in 2002, he was the very first German jazz artist on the…
Gefion, the 10:33 minute title track of the new ECM album by Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, slowly builds into a monumental, but silent and sometimes sinister piece, with transcendental qualities to it. The track is named after a goddess who is associated with prophecy. The track “Copenhagen”, Bro’s native city, also comes along as a…