The Brooklyn Rail

There is Winter Jazzfest in New York City (completely bursting), and then there is Winterjazz in Cologne (smaller, faster, but still completely bursting). The latter just celebrated its fifteenth edition, revolving around the Stadtgarten venue, which opened nearly four decades ago and soon became central to the jazz and improvised music scene of Cologne. Now it’s also a regular location for rock, electronic, folk, and fusion gigs, using its basement JAKI club space, which is dedicated to the crucial local sticksman Jaki Liebezeit, a member of Can—the greatest (and most innovative) band from this city of Cologne.

Winterjazz is also bolted tightly to the NICA artist development initiative, which selects younger players from the North Rhine-Westphalia region, supporting their emergent and ongoing activities. NICA takes its name from the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a key patron of jazz in the 1950s and ’60s—not least in her support of Thelonious Monk. This Winterjazz weekend included a bountiful NICA presence, for the fourth year, with its musicians presenting new concepts and line-ups with which to deliver these newborn sonic adventures. This was an excellent three days for the discovery of rising presences, many of whom were already delivering finely honed compositions or improvisations.

Winterjazz is a free admission festival, so substantial queues snaked out into the snowed conditions outside this park-adjacent venue. The main concert room stage and the makeshift restaurant stage were continuously overspilled, with Club Zimmermanns across the street offering only slightly more space to shuffle. Decisions (often instinctive) had to be made regarding likely timetable primacy, given the running overlap nature of the sets. Your scribe clutched his plan, but scrunched it up during the first set witnessed. The bassist Florian Herzog so captivated the ears that an original intent to move on after a couple of numbers transformed into a rooted placement for the band’s entire set. This is a perfect example of how trajectories will shift, right from the outset. Attendance is an improvisatory act, just like much of the music presented.

Herzog’s quartet included saxophonist Sebastian Gille, pianist Chaerin Im, and drummer Leif Berger—the latter turning out to be a major discovery of the weekend, appearing in several line-ups. The compositions held a wiry grace and evolved restlessly, allowing equal soloing space, balancing degrees of cerebral twisting and emphatic grit. Berger was in perpetual rickety motion, inhabiting beat-lands, but continually tinkering with their unimpeded procession. His skin-tuned drumhead tones were warmly rounded, the clatter organically muted. Meanwhile, Gille’s reedplay was akin to a hard-skinned serpent caught in a beak’s pincer-grip.

Straight across the street, Dog Soup (now three years old) sounded improved since their already high quality set at Cologne Jazzweek, 2024. They too rejoice in complex twinings and stutterings, emerging from the Zorn-scape, with an upright bass attuned to drone sympathetics (Anna Größbrink); a drummer (Marius Lamm) who scurried around the Zimmermanns’s floor, attacking small metal plate, glass bottles, and solid structural objects; a trombonist (Philipp Hayduk) who articulated with a glowingly traditional roundness; and an alto saxophonist (Ben Jones) who gripped the spirits via aggressively accurate staccato jabbing. Crucially, this foursome worked very tightly together, varying their palette between turbo-chasing and calm explorations of near inactivity.

There was a pronounced seam of moderne classical elements running through several sets in the NICA sequence. Two of them were in churches. Stadtgarten frequently uses the close-by Christuskirche during Cologne Jazzweek, and it was here that we found Pollon with Strings. A core jazzed threesome of Theresia Philipp (reeds), David Helm (bass), and Thomas Sauerborn (drums) merged with guesting violin, viola, and cello in this high-vaulted modern white-painted space. Philipp was the leading figure, with her clarinet and alto saxophone solo parts darting forward, embraced by cooling string sweeps. The set’s third section was a bustling nest of activity, following a spell of Early Music dominance. Jan Garbarek was invoked. Precision dominated, but still had the effect of rousing tension, akin to the first symptoms of free improvisation.

Another nearby church, at the other edge of the Stadtgarten park, presented a duo with a hugely enveloping sound. The Mendelssohn Project had Annie Bloch on the New Saint Alban organ, with Emily Wittbrodt to her side, on cello, both up on the raised balcony of this exquisitely lit interior. Candles flickered ghostly shadows across the walls, and the church was otherwise cloaked in darkness, all the better to carry the immense flow of the organ (also capable of pinprick outbreaks) and its accompanying cello dronescape. There was a climactic agitation, with a sagely contained violence. Although providing source matter, Mendelssohn’s shadowed presence might not have been recognized by most, as this extremely atmospheric piece tilted more to the music of Kali Malone, for instance, sounding very recent in its drone-ness. Bloch also leads a mainline jazz-song band, so this performance exposed her in a radically different light.

A trio named -etc. comprised Jonas Engel (reeds), Anais Tuerlinckx (piano), and Bella Comsom (electronics), seemingly improvising freely, definitely rupturing the surrounding space. This was a high-level, sharp-poised set of extreme freedom at Stadtgarten, mangling acoustic and electronic aspects equally, slashing them towards oneness. Pecker clarinet dotted against blow-out electro-savagery; as Comsom triggered stutter-lights to match the sonics, bright stab-attacks from boxes hung around her body, or under her draped scarves. Tuerlinckx was mostly leaning under her lid, preparing and un-preparing, melding with her strings directly. Interruption or interference were key parts of the trio vocabulary. Soft industrial springs and bendy metal covered a very low bass feel, as Engel played alto with mute, then trumpet with a water pipe, while the piano produced luminescent gamelan ripples. Sickly lime strobing burst out. These three were blessed with a particularly unusual palette of wonderment.

Whether springing from Winterjazz or the NICA inductees, this was a vibrant weekend of music, presenting the volatile state of new sounds and fresh faces, from all around the Cologne zone. Even with free admission, it remained impressive that such a massive crowd came out during a time of deep-freeze weather conditions for the city.

Show code