Berlin-Chicago-London Special feat. Nubya Garcia und Makaya McCraven

Jazzfest Berlin joins forces with J.A.W Family and sets out on a long satellite night at the Prince Charles club in Kreuzberg: Three top-tier bands on the axis London – Chicago – Berlin will perform in turn, three happening DJs on the axis Berlin – Chicago – Amsterdam will spin the turntables, cutting swathes through the November-night.

Makaya McCraven (*1983) is a well-known guest of J.A.W. He stands for Chicago and its musical openness and untamed joy of playing and experimenting. The drummer with African-Indigenous-Hungarian roots likes to stir things up wherever he goes. He puts down his beat-driven foundations and revs up the instrumentalists and vocalists he performs with. His recent album “Highly Rare” was proof of his creative dealings with gathered session material. His performance in Berlin will revolve around his latest album “Universal Beings”, to be released in October 2018. The young saxophonist Nubya Garcia (*1992), a shooting star from London’s melting pot and the emerging, self-organising movement JazzRefresh, will make her Berlin debut. Her debut album from last year, “Lost Kingdom”, was celebrated as highly remarkable not only by legend Gille Petterson. With a stalwart grip, she alternates between full speed ahead and intimate, whispering, flying sounds. Their joint live album “Where We Are Coming From (Chicago x London Mixtape)” demonstrates McCraven’s and Garcia’s musical openness and receptivity. They have built a forward-looking cooperation with a relentless propulsive force from two epicentres of jazz.

Makaya McCraven on Soundcloud
Makaya McCraven on Bandcamp
Makaya McCraven on YouTube
Website of Makaya McCraven

Nubya Garcia on Soundcloud
Nubya Garcia on Bandcamp
Nubya Garcia on YouTube
Lost Kingdom by Nubya Garcia on YouTube
Nubya Garcia on Facebook

For the evening’s third live-set, a number of musicians from both bands will merge and combine with musicians from Berlin to launch a Chicago-London-Berlin-experiment. This will be followed by a jazz-saturated, unconventional DJ-league featuring Amir Abdullah from Berlin, Darryn Jones from Chicago and Antal from Amsterdam: the crate-diggers and label owners Amir Abdullah, Antal Heitlager and Darryn Jones are permanently trawling gigantic sound archives, uncovering treasures (Detroit’s jazz label Strata) and keeping it alive. On Heitlager’s Kindred Spirit, sounds by Jimi Tenor, Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Theo Parrish, Madlib and others cross paths. This is one form of jazz, too, and definitely reason enough to immerse yourself in the former swimming pool of the Prince Charles club.

DJ Amir on Facebook
DJ Antal on Soundcloud
Darryn Jones on Soundcloud
Darryn Jones on Facebook