Branford Marsalis Quartet & Friends

Branford Marsalis Quartet

It goes without saying that The Concertgebouw and jazz & pop music make a perfect combination. The stages of both the Main Hall and the Recital Hall have borne witness to nearly the whole of jazz history. Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald have both performed here, as have Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Famous pop stars and bands that have graced the stage of the Main Hall include Frank Zappa, the Doors and the Eagles, to name but a few. Legendary concerts, in the present as well as the past.

Branford Marsalis & Friends

Michelangelo String Quartet & Friends

Michelangelo String Quartet

Edmar Castaneda Quartet

Edmar Castaneda has collaborated with a seemingly endless list of legends, sharing the virtuosic sound of his harp with giants such as Sting, John Scofield and Paco De Lucía, and playing with exceptional musicians such as the Japanese pianist Hiromi and the American banjo master Béla Fleck. The Columbian musician now comes to the Elbphilharmonie with his quartet led by singer Andrea Tierra. For Edmar Castaneda, who was born in Bogotá in 1978, his musical talent is a gift from god, which he wants to share with the world. But it is also a talent that was passed down to him from his father, a famous harpist and singer in Columbia. At the age of 13, Edmar Castaneda began playing the harp and the Latin American guitar cuatro, the standard instruments for joropo, a type of music and dance that originally comes from Venezuela. Since the mid-1990s, the Columbian musician has been living in New York, where he has made a name for himself with his symphonic harp sound and a blend of South American folk, flamenco and jazz.

Thomas Quasthoff Quartet

When Thomas Quasthoff brings his new programme »For You« to life, he is above all one thing – absolutely authentic. Quasthoff has a sure sense for the most suitable style of what he sings. This applies to opera arias, art and folk songs as well as jazz, pop and soul. He has long since proven that, as a classical singer with an enormously versatile bass-baritone, he can also master genres rooted in the African-American musical tradition. And so what one so appreciates about Quasthoff as a recital singer also becomes a golden rule for everything else. How the bass-baritone lives up to his claim of really touching people with his voice is made clear by the enthusiastic audience reactions and the praises of the press. He is joined by three excellent jazz musicians: Dieter Ilg is characterised by his electrifying vitality, intelligent curiosity, technical brilliance and total devotion to the moment. Wolfgang Haffner is Germany’s best-known drummer – with an unparalleled career that extends far beyond jazz. Simon Oslender is the youngest member of the band – once entering the scene as a »prodigy on the Hammond organ«, the now 24-year-old is considered one of the »rising stars« of the German music scene on piano, organ and keyboards.

The Simply Quartet plays Mozart, Grieg, Clarke and Marsalis

Finding coherence in the complex – that is the Simply Quartet's recipe for success. After winning several international competitions, including the Carl Nielsen Competition in Copenhagen and the Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna, the young ensemble is one of the rising stars of the quartet scene. For their debut in our quartet series, the four musicians will perform classics of the genre such as Mozart's “Hunting Quartet” and Grieg's Opus 27, as well as Wynton Marsalis’ jazzy Creole Contradanzas and American composer Rebecca Clarke’s thought-provoking Poem.

Christian Sands Quartet

At the age of just 34, the American pianist Christian Sands can already look back on a quite picture-perfect career: he took up the piano at aged four, wrote his first compositions at five, and his first album followed at twelve. He went on to study with jazz ambassador Billy Taylor, played with bassist Christian McBride and has since recorded eight albums. Now Sands is bringing his quartet to the Elbphilharmonie. The New Yorker relies in his playing on a powerful swinging tempo combined with sophisticated technical finesse. His reputation as a superb live entertainer precedes him. Besides his own compositions, Sands also takes a look far back into jazz history – with Jonathon Muir-Cotton on bass, Max Light on guitar and his brother Ryan Sands on drums. He incorporates and transforms old and not-so-old heroes of piano playing like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau with incredible ease. The »Süddeutsche Zeitung« newspaper once coined this »entrümpelte Klassiker« (»decluttered classics«).

Anouar Brahem Quartet

As a musician deeply rooted in the Arab tradition and at the same time open to various neighbouring worlds, Anouar Brahem has never ceased to forge new connections in his elegantly fused music, which combines the richness of his ancestral culture, the formal sophistication of Western chamber music and the expressive freedom of modern jazz.

Blue House Jazz – Camille Thurman & Darrell Green Quartet

Camille Thurman is a name to remember – if you haven’t already. She is widely acclaimed and richly awarded, with critics bending over backwards to capture the impact of her performances. As Downbeat Magazine wrote: “Imagine if Sarah Vaughan played saxophone like Dexter Gordon. That’s about the effect you get when vocalist and tenor saxophonist Camille Thurman takes the stage.”Born in New York in 1986, Camille Thurman is a saxophonist, vocalist, and composer. She made history as the first woman in 30 years to tour, record, and perform internationally as a full-time member of the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which she was part of from 2018 to 2020.Equally impressive as a singer and saxophonist, Thurman’s artistry combines tradition and innovation in a captivating way. She made her recording debut in 2014 and has since released three additional albums under her own name, most recently Confluence, Vol. 1: Alhambra in 2024. She has also contributed to numerous other albums.Now making her debut at Konserthuset Stockholm, Thurman performs with the Darrell Green Quartet. Her latest album is a collaboration with Green and his quartet. Darrell Green, also from New York, is a highly sought-after drummer and bandleader who has toured with legends such as Pharoah Sanders and Dr. Lonnie Smith.

Silk and Bamboo Quartet

Silk and bamboo – these are the fabrics used to produce the finely woven traditional music of south-east China. Pipa virtuoso Lingling Yu takes this fine art from her adopted home of Geneva out into the world with a young quartet of other traditional instruments. Lingling Yu comes from the nine-million-strong metropolis of Hangzhou, south of Shanghai, a centre of the silk and tea industry and also China’s own Silicon Valley. Even as a teenager, she was considered a child prodigy on the pear-shaped pipa, a necked bowl lute originally fitted with silk strings. In 1998, Yu moved to Switzerland in order to establish ties between Chinese and Western music, broadening her horizons by studying orchestration, counterpoint and composition. In addition to the pipa, her Silk and Bamboo Quartet brings together other traditional instruments: Wenqi Gu plays the guzheng, a 21-string, 2,500-year-old arched zither. The internationally experienced Guo Gan brings the erhu and gaohu violins to the quartet; he is also well versed in Western classical music and jazz. The quartet is completed by the young Hongze An, who has a command of the bamboo transverse flutes dizi and xiao, the mouth organ sheng and the bawu with its clarinet-like sound. Alternating between solo and ensemble performances, the group’s repertoire includes pieces from the south-east of China and the provinces of Canton and Yunnan as well as from the cities of Chaozhou and Hangzhou.