Niescier / Reid / Salem // Henkelhausen // Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

18:00

Niescier / Reid / Salem: “Beyond Dragons”

(DE, US)

Few reedists in Europe transmit as much radiant energy as the Cologne-based alto saxophonist Angelika Niescier, who channels the fiery intensity of free jazz while painting within jagged post-bop lines. She is both a traditionalist and rebel who regularly collaborates with other European musicians like pianist Alexander Hawkins or fellow saxophonist Sakina Abdou, but over her career she has regularly sought out on some of the most powerful, idiosyncratic figures on the New York scene, such as drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Chris Tordini. But the bond she has developed with cellist Tomeka Reid is something else altogether. 

Reid is a Jazzfest Berlin veteran, performing with the Art Ensemble of Chicago in 2018 and returning with her Hemphill Stringtet in 2022. She has taken her instrument to new places through her indelible writing and mastery of the vamp, frequently providing bass lines or soulful riffs to propel the improvisations of her bandmates, but she is also a versatile soloist, producing lines of aching beauty and explosions of texture. Niescier’s compositions on the two musicians’ 2023 album “Beyond Dragons” with drummer Savannah Harris juggle nifty unison themes, heated interplay and ecstatic improvisation, suggesting a modern, jacked-up answer to Henry Threadgill’s Air. For this performance the drum throne is occupied by the up-and-coming New York percussionist Eliza Salem.

Line-up

Angelika Niescier – alto saxophone
Tomeka Reid – cello
Eliza Salem – drums

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19:30

Felix Henkelhausen: “Deranged Particles”

(AT, DE, GB, GR)

Bassist Felix Henkelhausen moved to Berlin from his native city Oldenburg in 2014 to attend the Jazz Institute Berlin, but it didn’t take long before this wide-eyed student had become a fixture on the local scene. A technically astonishing musician, his grasp of tradition and his investment in experimentation have made him a trusted resource. None other than drummer Jim Black enlisted Henkelhausen as the harmonic anchor for his current band The Schrimps, colliding groove and harmony with fierce authority. While the bassist plays in numerous bands – the ruminative, wide-open piano trio Fare or TAU with their jagged electro-fusion – as well as also leading a gritty quintet, no project has revealed his compositional range and conception as a bandleader like Deranged Particles. 

Henkelhausen formed the band to explore tunes fueled by tricky rhythmic inversions, reaching beyond the post-bop model he is celebrated for. The septet features a deep cast of players from the Berlin-Cologne axis including tenor saxophonist Philipp Gropper, New York-based keyboardist Elias Stemeseder and vibraphonist Evi Filippou, all helping the leader to bring a futuristic vibe to the music, with its complex electro-acoustic timbre and its hurtling stop-start grooves. The band proposes a warped aesthetic with its own grammar and vocabulary – the sound of a community from the future.

Line-up

Percy Pursglove – trumpet
Philipp Gropper – tenor saxophone
Evi Filippou – vibraphone, marimba
Valentin Gerhardus – sampling, electronics
Elias Stemeseder – piano, cembalo, synthesizer
Felix Henkelhausen – double bass, composition
Philip Dornbusch – drums, percussion 

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21:00

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith: “Defiant Life”

(US)

Pianist Vijay Iyer began collaborating with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith two decades ago as a member of the latter’s Golden Quartet. Iyer ascended to partner with this long-running duo, which considers pressing socio-political issues of our time through sound. The pair’s second album “Defiant Life”, examines the human condition, delving into both its suffering and resilience. As Iyer says, “This recording session was conditioned by our ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year’s cruelties, but also by our faith in human possibility.”

The quietly simmering intensity of the music they create together reconciles dark, sometimes ominous harmonies with melodic lines that ripple with spiritual vulnerability. Smith’s muted blowing on a piece like “Sumud” quietly transmits a harrowing beauty. An early member of Chicago’s influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and a composer who’s forged his own musical universe, Smith is in the midst of his final European tour, extending this heady project with Iyer, one of the most profound and elastic musicians of the 21st century.

As part of his European tour, WadadaLeo Smith will also be performing with a new trio at the Pierre Boulez Saal on 8 November 2025.

Line-up

Vijay Iyer – piano, electric piano, electronics
Wadada Leo Smith – trumpet