Event information

There are good reasons why the names of all those involved in this band are listed on an equal footing. "Moving Times" is the result of real teamwork - a newly formed group in which everyone acts as equals. Singer Esther Kaiser and guitarist Axel Fischbacher are two established figures on the German jazz scene who have been leading their own bands independently of each other for many years and have released numerous albums of their own. The two belong to different generations - bassist Genevieve O'Driscoll and drummer/vibraphonist Michael Knippschild represent another. Three generations, two women and two men - and it fits.
"There is a common mindset in the band," says Fischbacher. Kaiser adds: "We function as an equal quartet, even though Axel and I provided the impetus." Fischbacher puts it in a nutshell: "It's really something special that something so artistically unified can emerge from such a constellation, in which nobody has the big say, and that you can achieve such a result."
The quartet does indeed sound as if they have been cast from the same mould. Right from the start, you can feel a fresh, positive spirit running through the many different compositions. The jam factor is important to the band - "we find a good balance between arrangement and spontaneity - flowing between what has been discussed and what happens in the moment".

www.estherkaiser.de

The Fuchsthone Orchestra is anything but a conventional big band. With the two masterminds Caroline Thon and Christina Fuchs at the helm and a line-up expanded to include violin, vocals and electronics, the 22 award-winning musicians represent the state of the art of contemporary large jazz ensembles. In the band leaders' compositions, brute tutti passages and brass voicings à la Maria Schneider are followed by moments of silence, interspersed with collective improvisations by smaller sub-units of the band. An impressive musical experience that makes full use of the diverse sound colours and combination possibilities of the instruments involved.
Since its foundation in 2019, the Fuchsthone Orchestra has established itself as one of the leading, innovative large ensembles in Germany. in 2021, they were nominated for the German Jazz Award. in 2023, they released their debut album "Structures & Beauty" on ENJA Records and were celebrated by audiences on their release tour. in 2024, the ensemble broke new ground by inviting a guest, media artist Claudia Schmitz, for the first time and with the compositions tailored to "Live Moving Images" they have catapulted themselves into multidimensionality through another genre! This spring, they have been nominated for the German Jazz Award in the "Large Ensemble of the Year" category for the second time.
The next guest is already lined up for autumn 2025: the young, brilliant vibraphonist and percussionist Evi Filippou will inspire and instrumentally enrich the orchestra's new programme. The tour in November will be followed in December 2025 by the studio recording for the Fuchsthone Orchestra's second album, which is expected to be released in 2026.
Rich in textures, brilliant arrangements and solo highlights, the Fuchsthone Orchestra fascinates, clairvoyantly anchored in the present and at the same time visionary for the future. Rousing and touching, urgent and challenging. The more than 20 musicians, many of whom have won awards and have been present on the jazz scene for a long time, make up this masterful ensemble that impressively transports you to new worlds.

www.fuchsthone.com

Every Tuesday: Jam Session in the Jazz-Schmiede. The evening always starts at 8pm with an opener concert set with different bands every week. Afterwards, from around 9pm, there is an open jam session - anyone can come and join in to jam with other musicians and the opening band. Admission is free, so the sessions are also a great opportunity to get to know the Schmiede in an uncomplicated way.

The Kingaro Collective around singer, composer and bandleader Gosia Rogala seemingly effortlessly combines different worlds of sound: At times, their pieces bring rousing swing and blues vibes to life, at others they drift into groovy, pulsating rhythms.

Rogala's use of the voice is exciting: Sometimes she tells of longing, encounters and departure in poetic lyrics, sometimes her voice itself becomes an instrument - in artful vocalises it carries the melodies, floats above the harmonies and merges with the sound of the band. The result is music that is emotionally moving, energising and always surprising

The Devil and Margarita: Cult Classic Goes Rock-N-Roll!

Songs (in English) and staged reading (in German)

The translator/author Alexandra Berlina and the composer Dmitri Chuvelev ("Neschastny Sluchai") have no respect for classical music! And so Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita was turned into a rock musical comedy. In The Devil and Margarita, Satan himself arrives in Stalinist Moscow with his demonic crew, turns the city upside down and, at Margarita's behest, rescues her beloved writer from the madhouse. The libretto reinforces the grotesque, humorous and decadent - and the music provides plenty of drive!

A dream team of experienced amateurs and professionals under the musical direction of pianist Igor Kirillov performs the songs and gives a staged reading. The songs are sung in English and played in German - and if you pay close attention, you might even pick up a word or two in Russian!

More about the Great Satanic Ball, the murderous Vaudeville show, the talking cat, the flying pig and other devilries:
https://thedevilandmargarita.com

Four exceptional musicians combine their unmistakable soundscapes to create a shared experience. Their gripping timing and hypnotic melodic interplay create musical fireworks. The Weniger / Morello US Quartet brings jazz of the highest calibre to the stage. Together with the world-famous bassist John Goldsby and the legendary drummer Adam Nussbaum, the two virtuosos unite modern jazz aesthetics with grooving rhythms and lyrical depth.

Peter Weniger - "Being part in the act of creation" - with this credo, the saxophonist is internationally active in numerous musical projects of various genres. High emotionality and brilliant virtuosity characterise his musical statement. Numerous prizes, awards and performances with Jasper van't Hof, Billy Cobham, Maceo Parker, Eddie Palmieri, Django Bates, Mike Stern, Peter Herbolzheimer's RC&B, and the ARD Big Bands of SWR, HR, NDR and WDR emphasise his international appeal. He has been a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts since October 1999.

Paulo Morello is regarded as one of the most interesting jazz guitarists in Europe. This is demonstrated by his successful international projects with trumpet star Randy Brecker, bossa nova legend Leny Andrade and the Night Of Jazz Guitars with the late Larry Coryell. Morello has performed with them at the most important European and South American festivals. He has also worked with Jimmy Smith, Bob Mintzer, Paul Kuhn, Billy Cobham, Airto Moreira, Philip Catherine and Pat Martino. Morello teaches as a professor of jazz guitar at the Jazz Institute Berlin.

John Goldsby played solo bass in the Grammy-award-winning WDR Big Band in Cologne from 1994 to 2024. Before that, he was a fixture on the New York jazz scene and also released numerous albums as a bandleader. With the WDR Big Band, Goldsby performed for decades with international stars such as Joe Lovano, Patti Austin, Maceo Parker, Jacob Collier, Knower, Antonio Sánchez and Chucho Valdés. In addition to his artistic activities, he teaches at the Conservatorium in Maastricht.

Adam Nussbaum is one of the best percussionists of our time. The list of artists he has worked with reads like a "Who's Who" of the jazz world: John Abercrombie, Michael & Randy Brecker, Eliane Elias, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, Vic Juris, James Moody, John Scofield, Joe Sample, Ohad Talmor, "Toots" Thielemans, Kenny Wheeler & NHØP. Nussbaum's simultaneously gripping and sensitive style has significantly influenced generations of drummers.

Doors 7:30 pm
Lindy Hop taster session for concert visitors 8.00 pm
Concert 8.30 pm

Band: Marion & Sobo Band
DJ: Tobias Stoeber

"We are travelling. We discover. We play" is their motto and with their music the Marion & Sobo Band present a captivating and playful multilingual programme full of fantasy, humour and colourful music. In addition to their own compositions, they also interpret some classics as a tribute to their musical roots in Western and Eastern Europe, ranging from the French swing of the 1930s to traditional melodies.

Tobias Stoeber: Originally from Wuppertal, Tobi started dancing in Cologne in 2007. With his talent for selecting the perfect swing music and creating an energetic atmosphere on the dance floor, Tobi's events soon became some of the most popular in the region.

The Jazz-Schmiede is transformed into a ballroom on this evening. Lindy Hop is the dance to swing music that found its namesake in the late 1920s in Charles Lindbergh, who crossed the Atlantic in 1927. The headline of the day back then was: "Lucky Lindy Hops the Atlantic". Today, this dance is back on the dancefloors.

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The Kultur(r)etten have been organising the Culture Club, the only LGBTQ show in the state capital Düsseldorf, under the motto "Stars, starlets and sluts" or "Without rehearsals all the way to the top" for 30 years, since 1993. Everyone is welcome to enjoy a cheerful, wild but also trashy show, which often surprises the performers and is constantly being reinvented.

Every Tuesday: Jam Session in the Jazz-Schmiede. The evening always starts at 8pm with an opener concert set with different bands every week. Afterwards, from around 9pm, there is an open jam session - anyone can come and join in to jam with other musicians and the opening band. Admission is free, so the sessions are also a great opportunity to get to know the Schmiede in an uncomplicated way.

Flemish songs with melismas from the cultural metropolis of Antwerp (Belgium)

Toasaves is a fascinating project from Belgium that brings together musicians from different musical backgrounds under the artistic direction of Tristan Driessens, who specialises in traditional Flemish songs.
Toasaves means "home harbours" in the Antwerp dialect. The name says it all for the ensemble: the musicians draw their inspiration from the diverse influences reflected in the city's history. Antwerp is a dock harbour at the mouth of the Scheldt and the second largest port in Europe after Rotterdam. Early on, the city was a global meeting place for traders, in the 15th/16th century one of the largest cities in the world, at times the most important trading centre in Europe and traditionally the most important diamond trading centre in the world. But it also attracted painters such as Peter Paul Rubens as a refined cultural metropolis.
And Antwerp was also the home of Wannes Van de Velde (29 April 1937 - 10 November 2008), the legendary Flemish singer, musician, poet, puppeteer and folk artist who was known for singing in the local dialect. His father, Jaak Van de Velde, was a metalworker and talented singer, his mother a housewife and singer, so he was always surrounded by music at home. He grew up in the neighbourhood of Antwerp's red light district.
Wannes Van de Velde is an important source of inspiration for Tristan Driessens. And so today he asks himself, in the spirit of the chronicler Wannes Van de Velde, what an Afghan rubab player and a Sephardic violinist could have done in 15th century Antwerp ... and Toasaves provide the musical answers! With them, the old Flemish songs breathe the diverse cultural influences of today: with creativity and openness, with frame drum, lute and microtonal violin, with bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies and medieval flutes, with stylistic elements from Afghan, Corsican, Greek, Turkish and Sephardic traditions, the ensemble has created a fascinating world. As bizarre as this may seem, the effect is intoxicating and you can't help but listen ever more deeply to the driving rhythms, changing melodies and virtuoso performances to find out what the hell is going on. The virtuosity of the musicians makes for an exciting and wonderful journey into a perhaps not entirely fictional lost world.

New Faces Big Band Special

Founded and led by composer, guitarist and arranger Finn Heine, the ensemble consists of 18 up-and-coming musicians who bring a fresh sound to the jazz scene with their energetic music. The great quality of the big band members lies in the fact that many of them have already enjoyed training in one of the renowned state youth jazz orchestras in their youth and then deepened this training at national level in the BundesJazzOrchester Deutschland.
Our programme consists exclusively of original compositions by the band members, which combine tradition and contemporary jazz and inspire the audience with a unique big band sound. The Traumfabrik Jazzorchester stands for creative passion, high musical quality and a rousing stage experience.

When New York jazz guitarist Peter Bernstein - hailed by the international press as one of the leading jazz guitarists of our time - meets the outstanding Martin Sasse Trio, musical magic is guaranteed. Bernstein's warm, blues-soaked sound, reminiscent of greats such as Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell, is combined with the energetic joy of playing and virtuosity of Cologne pianist Martin Sasse and his congenial band.

Bernstein, who has already performed on stages around the world with legends such as Sonny Rollins, Diana Krall, Brad Mehldau and Dr Lonnie Smith, is a regular guest at renowned New York jazz clubs. Together with the Martin Sasse Trio, he presents the programme of their current CD "A Groovy Affair" - and that is exactly what jazz fans can expect: groovy energy, masterful improvisation and first-class modern jazz.

www.martinsasse.de

The Josefine Kunecke Quartet presents compositions by the band leader in a sound that is both moving and captivating - new, jazzy songs that effortlessly combine influences from jazz, pop and blues. With her sensitive voice and music that sometimes invites you to dream, sometimes to savour, the band takes the audience on a multi-faceted journey of sound and presents their debut EP "Breath of the Wind".

Every Tuesday: Jam Session in the Jazz-Schmiede. The evening always starts at 8pm with an opener concert set with different bands every week. Afterwards, from around 9pm, there is an open jam session - anyone can come and join in to jam with other musicians and the opening band. Admission is free, so the sessions are also a great opportunity to get to know the Schmiede in an uncomplicated way.

The authoritarian threat - How the "International of Nationalists" came about and what we can do to counter it
Lecture and discussion with Dr Dr h.c. Michael Schmidt-Salomon

The "International of Nationalists", which stretches from Moscow via Riyadh, Tehran and Istanbul to Washington, combines political chauvinism with reactionary religious values. In the US, the "holy culture warriors" are well on their way to establishing a new form of theocracy thanks to the support of "tech bros" such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Their enemy is not least "secular Europe". In his lecture, Michael Schmidt-Salomon shows what characterises this reactionary movement and what options are available to stop the destruction of open society.

Four big names from the NRW scene bring concentrated virtuosity and joy of playing to the stage. Original compositions meet classics from the American Songbook and merge into a programme full of energy and musical dialogue. An evening that celebrates jazz in all its diversity and vitality.

For all tap dancers and tap dance enthusiasts, the next tap jam session is finally back in Düsseldorf. Tap dancers meet to improvise and make music together. Curious and interested spectators are very welcome at this special party! "Let's connect & keep calm and tap dance"