Marc Ribot Quartet »Hurry Red Telephone« / Red Lily Quintet

JazzKLUB / Insane Imagination / James Brandon Lewis’ Red Lily Quintet

The 40-year-old saxophonist’s music is a bridge between the religious tradition of the Black South, the heritage of wonderful jazz tenors, and the fire of free jazz. It is not so much located in the borderlands of jazz classics and the so-called avant garde, as it is above the division, ever more artificial these days. The leader of the Red Lily Quintet managed to bring together musicians who think similarly to him, the very best in the generation of great synthesis. Lewis’ skills as a saxophonist go through the roof and his imagination is insane – this much is well known. He is also characterised by charisma and a specific type of fervour that is sometimes described as “soulful”, “emotional” and “deep”, but none of the words alone could ever summarise the attitude. To see James Brandon Lewis playing live is an experience like none other. Tomasz Gregorczyk Concert duration: approximately 90 minutes

Wind Quintet

Benjamin Lackner Quintet

»A sensation in quiet tones«, »A work full of poetry and tenderness«, »Some can see the new Keith Jarrett in him«: there is truly no shortage of praise for the latest creation by pianist Benjamin Lackner. He is on stage here with four equally illustrious companions. The worldwide favourable reviews apply to Lackner’s album »Last Decade« (2022), his first for the label ECM. Born in Berlin in 1976 and having spent 13 years living in the US, its success suddenly catapulted the artist into the premier league of jazz musicians with (also) German roots. At the same time, it is already his ninth album that is sparking so much enthusiasm. Lackner had already been releasing his music on records for 20 years. Early on in his career, the singing of his lines attracted attention: what he played sounded deliberate and anything but verbose. Piano guru Brad Mehldau taught Lackner privately for a while. Mehldau’s embellishing is unmistakable. »Last Decade«, however, appears as the redemption of the old motto by Goethe »Mensch, werde wesentlich« [Human, become true to your essence]. No sound too much, condensed emotion in a few, meticulously placed notes. With Mathias Eick (trumpet), Manu Katché (drums) and Jérôme Regard (bass), world-class artists also assisted Lackner. This spring, ECM return to the studio in the south of France. The material that Lackner intends to bring on his autumn concert tour will be recorded there. Of the original quartet, Mathias Eick has stayed with him, but the new band is rounded off as a quintet with a second top wind player: the American saxophonist Mark Turner, already on the Elbphilharmonie’s wish list for a long time, joins in. Bassist Harish Raghavan has been constantly playing with Lackner for several years.. The Frenchman Matthieu Chazarenc has been associated with Lackner since their early New York trio days and is his chosen drummer for this line-up.

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«).

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.

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.

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.

Marc Ribot & Rootless Cosmopolitans

»›Rootless Cosmopolitans‹ was the first record over which I had full control,« says Marc Ribot about the album he released in 1990 as the first under his own name. So, it is also the album that is the entry point into his fascinating work for many of his fans and it enjoys a particularly high profile. With the Rootless Cosmopolitans, Ribot brings together all the different styles and influences he tried and tested separately for years for the culmination of the »Reflektor« Festival dedicated to him and presents an original horror soundtrack in the first part of the concert. As a result, his own compositions and numerous cover versions, such as the Beatles classic »While My Guitar Gently Weeps«, provide ample room for noise, free improvisation and rock. With bassist Brad Jones, a musician from the original line-up with whom Ribot recorded the »Rootless Cosmopolitans« album and its successor »Requiem For What’s His Name« in 1990 and 1992 is here in the concert at the Elbphilharmonie. The group is completed by the extraordinary drummer Ches Smith, who also plays with Ceramic Dog. In the first set of the concert, Ribot and pianist Anthony Coleman play their own soundtrack to the film »Shadows Choose Their Horrors«. It is the dark and melodic diary of a necromancer living on the edge between the mortal world and the realm of lost souls. Sinister forces surround Madame G (Winsome Brown) as she tries to bond with her favorite undead. Using magic and ritual to give them new life and pleasures, Madame G is shocked by the devastating outcome. Marc Ribot provides this experimental re-working of the early silent film horror with an equally experimental guitar soundtrack that reinforces the film’s goosebump-inducing atmosphere.

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.