Whether BIMHUIS, South Tyrol Jazz Festival Alto Adige or Kongsberg Jazz Festival. New international and national collaborations.
Creating spaces of exchange for a young, experimental generation of musicians and encouraging sustainable networking and creative exchange is one of the main focuses of NICA artist development. In the context of national and international collaborations, it is essential to initiate links with an audience that is eager to discover new things.
This year, we had the opportunity to cooperate with a number of European festivals and venues and offer opportunities for live experiences beyond the local scene.
Saxophonist and composer Fabian Dudek played a double concert with his quartet Almost at BIMHUIS in Amsterdam and at Stadtgarten Köln in June 2024. Both evenings they were accompanied by Dutch Mountain Tribe, the ensemble of Dutch saxophonist and composer Koen Boeijinga. Founded in 1974 and based at Piet Heinkade in Amsterdam since 2005, BIMHUIS is one of the most important venues for improvised music in the Netherlands.
The summer brought three international collaborations: singer and bandleader Rebekka Salomea played with SALOMEA (feat. Yannis Anft, Oliver Lutz and Leif Berger) at RADAR Festival in Varna, Bulgaria, where they gave a preview of their current album ‘Good Life’. Pianist Marlies Debacker gave a solo performance at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival, the most traditional jazz festival in Norway. With Day by Day, Fabian Dudek presented a band at the Südtirol Jazz Festival Alto Adige, which celebrated its premiere at the Cologne Jazzweek 2023.
There has been a close collaboration with Cologne Jazzweek since 2022. Theresia Philipp was commissioned to compose a piece for this year’s 4th edition of the festival, and the composer and saxophonist took the opportunity to form a new band. Seeds of Sweat performed for the first time on 4 September. Two Cologne Jazzweek concerts were curated by NICA in cooperation with the renowned Jazzfestival Saalfelden and the Jazzwerkstatt Bern, which will in turn offer a stage to the programme’s sponsored artists at their festivals in the future.
Theresia Philipps Seeds of Sweat - Cologne Jazzweek 04.09.2024
The collaboration with the Leipziger Jazztage, which began in 2023, was also successfully continued with the duo premiere of cellist and composer Emily Wittbrodt and US singer and guitarist Wendy Eisenberg.
