Jazzfest Berlin Outer Spaces

In recent years, Jazzfest Berlin increasingly sees itself as a platform for the experimental and the new. It strives to enable musicians to realise innovative projects often involving international collaboration.

This year, the Kuppelhalle at silent green therefore functions as a creative space laboratory for three completely different projects. The British pianist Alexander Hawkins will present the premiere of his multi-media collaboration “SUNNOSPHERE” with Beirut-born, Berlin-based artist and rapper Siska, featuring a stellar line-up of participants from Berlin and London. At the centre of the installative concert performance, a disco ball serves as a miniature sun as it casts projections into throughout the interior of Kuppelhalle, while a musical sound sphere (not only according to the title) refers to SUN Ra and Thelonius SPHERE Monk. Joel Grip, Berlin-based Swedish bassist, presents four musical ceremonies that have emerged from ritual gatherings of his diverse line-up in two ‘Outer Spaces’ of the Berlin improvised music scene, Club Demboh and Au Topsi Pohl. The “ceremonies” are based on the lost and reinvented language Ap Lla. Last but not least, there is Witch ’n ’ Monk, the dynamic-polyglot duo of the newly arrived British and British-Colombian expats Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra. In an extended version, they reinterpret the musical material of their current album together with musicians from the contemporary music ensemble LUX:NM and Jim Black on drums. Among other things, indigenous cosmologies originating from the Amazon will play a role in the video scores created by Florian Japp, forming surprising intersections with the latest researches in microbiology.