Julia Hülsmann Quartet & Anna-Lena Schnabel // Mette Henriette & Ensemble // Wadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet

Julia Hülsmann and her quartet are well known to audiences not just in Berlin but around the world. This performance is the debut of a new collaboration between the group and the alto saxophonist Anna-Lena Schnabel, a graduate of the BuJazzO, the German national youth jazz orchestra. It was after hearing Schnabel with the group of the drummer Björn Lücker at jazzahead! 2015 in Bremen that Richard Williams, the artistic director of Jazzfest Berlin, brought her to Hülsmann’s attention and suggested a collaboration. Hülsmann invited Schnabel to travel to Berlin from her home in Hamburg; their initial musical encounter worked so well that all five musicians immediately agreed to compose special pieces for a performance at this year’s festival.
www.juliahuelsmann.de
www.curiouscase.de/anna-lena-schnabel

Mette Henriette Martedatter Rølvåg describes herself as “an independent composer and saxophonist whose artistic visions span far beyond the borders of sound”, and her debut album, released late in 2015, certainly impressed many listeners with the uniqueness of this young Norwegian musician’s approach. Two discs showed two different ways to blend the sounds of free improvisation with the requirements of composed music. The first disc was by a chamber-jazz trio of saxophone, cello and piano, the second by a 13-piece ensemble including brass, strings and bandoneon. In both formats her pieces, some of them no more than a minute in duration, are often delicate in coloration but always powerful in impact. Her own playing shows a young woman who has listened to the great figures of free jazz but has used their innovations to create a language of her own.
www.mettehenriette.com

Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for his mammoth work “Ten Freedom Summers”, which takes a panoramic look at the history of the civil rights struggle, Wadada Leo Smith is a distinguished trumpeter, composer and bandleader. Born in Leland, Mississippi in 1941, he moved to Chicago and became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. His early groups included the Creative Construction Company (with Anthony Braxton) and New Dalta Akhri (with Henry Threadgill). His innumerable musical adventures have included collaborations with the late guitarist Derek Bailey and a reinterpretation of Miles Davis’s electric period. Among his recent projects is a duo with the pianist Vijay Iyer, performing pieces inspired by the Indian painter Nasreen Mohamedi. The Great Lakes Quartet made its recording debut in 2014.
www.wadadaleosmith.com
www.jonathonhaffner.com
www.johnlindberg.com