Angelika Niescier / Florian Weber Quintet // Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin / hr-Bigband // DeJohnette / Coltrane / Garrison

The passionate sound and creative imagination of the Polish-born saxophonist Angelika Niescier are familiar to listeners in Europe and the United States, where she and the pianist Florian Weber, who was born in Detmold and is based (like Niescier) in Cologne, have been developing the very distinctive music of their quintet. The group is completed by three distinguished American musicians: the trumpeter Ralph Alessi, the bassist Eric Revis and the drummer Gerald Cleaver. The provocative compositions provided by the two leaders enable each member to display an inventiveness that gives the ensemble its compelling character.
www.angelika-niescier.de
www.florianweber.net

The last time the Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch appeared at Jazzfest Berlin, it was with the “zen-funk” quartet he calls Ronin. This time he arrives not just with that group but with the hr-Bigband: a fascinating prospect for fans of Bärtsch’s approach to rhythmic games, honed when he and his bands – either Ronin or its acoustic counterpart, Mobile – appear every Monday night at Club Exil in Zürich, which he founded in 2009. In recent times he has experimented by adding three horns or a small group of string players to the basic formats, but the adventure with this big band is on a very different scale. Born in 1971, Bärtsch studied philosophy, linguistics and musicology at Zurich University, and spent six months in Japan before returning home to start his club and a record label.
www.nikbaertsch.com
www.hr-bigband.de

Jack DeJohnette (born in 1942) has known Ravi Coltrane (born in 1965) and Matthew Garrison (born in 1970) since they were children. He played with their respective fathers, John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison, when he spent a week as a guest drummer with Coltrane’s band in 1966, the year before the great saxophonist’s death. In fact Matthew Garrison is DeJohnette’s godson; after his father’s death in 1976 he moved to Italy with his mother but returned to live with the drummer and his family at their home in Woodstock while finishing high school. The three first played together in 1991, after Ravi Coltrane had completed his studies at the California Institute of Arts. The music they make is neither nostalgic nor restricted by the apparent simplicity of the instrumental format. As DeJohnette told “Jazz Journal”: “The music adjusts to its times.”
www.jackdejohnette.com
www.ravicoltrane.com
www.garrisonjazz.com