The Jeff Herr Corporation is a jazz trio composed of Jeff Herr on the drums, Maxime Bender on the saxophone and Laurent Payfert on the double bass. Well-arranged and structured songs as well as wild and free improvisations cover the bands large repertoire, filled with surprising cover songs from iconic pop artists such as David Bowie or Jimi Hendrix. The strength and tightness of the band emerge from a strong rhythmical impact and emphasise the origins of music: the groove.

 

Entitled “Manifesto”, the new album of the Luxembourgisch contemporary jazz trio around the drummer Jeff Herr consists of 7 original songs and a surprising cover version of Randy Newman’s song ‚Same girl‘. It ensures the continuity of the previous album ‚Layer Cake‘, of the oscillation between structured compositions and free improvisations as well as of the contrast between the acoustic sound and the contemporary interpretation.

 

 

 

Ola Onabulé - A charismatic and sophisticated entertainer possessing an emotional intensity and vocal virtuosity accompanied by poignant storytelling. Those who already know Ola’s work truly appreciate this powerful performer and his capacity to cross cultural and musical boundaries with an unflinching and lyrical pursuit of truth and justice.

 

Onabulé has forged an international career via his relentless program of recordings and concerts. Appearances at many of the most respected international jazz festivals that include Montreal, Vancouver, Istanbul, London, Edmonton, Umbria as well as concert halls and Jazz clubs worldwide ensuring that Onabulé’s reputation continues to be cemented with audiences globally.

 

Onabulé's songs about love, loss and the human condition have been performed all over the world with his quartet/quintet as well as appearances with much larger ensembles of big bands and symphonic orchestras. This includes several projects with the Grammy winning WDR Big Band of Cologne, the SWR Big Band of Stuttgart, the HR Big Band of Frankfurt, Danish Radio Big Band, Copenhagen and Babelsberg Film Orchestra. Performances further afield with Big Band Jazz Y Mexico in Mexico City and Orquestra Symphonica of San Luis Potosi in Mexico.

 

Onabulé's new album, ‘It’s the Peace That Deafens’ contains 12 evocative songs about identity, reconciliation and nostalgia. Words, melodies and rhythms walk a delicate tightrope of paradoxes, born of a childhood and adulthood immersed in two disparate cultures, on two different continents during two different periods of time. Ola recently shared the view that 'It’s The Peace That Deafens' is as much a work of exploration as it is a declaration about the universal themes of what it is to be human in the 21st Century.

The singer was born and grew up in Ukraine, in the cityKharkov. Here she mastered the vocal and piano technique, having graduated from Kharkiv National University of Arts. I. P. Kotlyarovsky. She constantly performs at various festivals of both jazz and folklore music. The singer toured not only in her native country, but also travels to Europe, Israel, the United States. Marina Zakharova herself came up with the name forhis musical style. This is the so-called global music. Each composition created by the singer harmoniously combines folklore (Ukrainian, Roma, Sepharic, Azerbaijani, Jewish songs), elements of jazz and academic music.

 

Her life is music. Biography of the singer is directly related to her career. Since 2010 she constantly tours and performs with Orhan Agabeyli. Until then, she was in the band Anno Domini and traveled around the world with concerts.

 

For more than 10 years, Marinita has been working with Orhan Anabeyli, who is famous for his virtuosic drumming and is known as a professional percussionist. Both Marina Zakharova and Orkhan previously took part in various musical projects, both in Ukraine and in other countries. Orhan began learning music at the age of 15. He mastered the technique of independent playing on percussion instruments, and then enrolled in the faculty of the Conservatory of pop and jazz in Kharkov, where he learned to play drums. He also studied at the National University in Kiev. During his musical career, he took part in many music festivals and forums, and also toured in Europe and Asia. This duo steals attention and generates a multicultural experience.

 

Guitarist Maciek Pysz joins forces with two French artists to create expansive, open and poetic music developed in southern France and evoking the open spaces of Morocco: organic and raw, yet seeking introspection and ‘the spaces in-between’.

 

“We met fortuitously while attending a concert in Monaco in 2014. We exchanged our conceptions of life, our ways of thinking about music. It was an artistic love at first sight! We decided to meet again to create a musical workshop that would resonate with our ethics and to implement ground-breaking compositional techniques where everyone's personality, poetic soul and sense of the nomadic blended in the same breath.

 

During the summer of 2015 we locked ourselves away for months in southern France to develop our ‘plainness in sound’ in rehearsal sessions. We had fun playing blindfolded, sometimes working in the open air, sometimes in town absorbing urban energy, all the time listening to the resonance behind every silence.

 

The result was Inwardness. Introspection, the space between sounds and inhabited silences are the roots of our inspiration. The music seeks to reflect the inner self that is in all things. The resulting songs have a raw and organic sound purity, as if they had been shaped by the seasons, a kaleidoscope where rhythmic melodies and sound textures collide and mingle.”

 

Davy Sur is a very interesting musician. His style evolved in the course of his many voyages around the world, through personal encounters, but above all through years of musical research, since from his very first encounter with music he chose to be self-taught. Whether on cello, guitar, piano or drums, this passion for creating his own rhythms, for composing, has never left him.

 

Over many years, from New York to Benares, Istanbul to Lombok, Sur discovered musical colours and spices, which he “cooked” in his own way in his rhythmic and melodic compositions. Wherever he went, he shared the stage with musicians of different genres, from the most contemporary jazz to music of African, Cuban, Flamenco, Persian and Indian influence.

 

 

Maciek Pysz - Guitar/FX

David Amar - Sax/Keys/FX/Voice

Davy Sur - Drums/Percussion/FX

This is a duo with unusual charm, a subtle meeting of soprano with a delicate vibraphone. Soprano Reut Rivka is a young Israeli Baroque, Opera and Contemporary Music singer, a versatile vocalist and an Improviser. Reut has performed as soloist at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Dutch National Opera, Anton Philipszaal The Hague, The Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin, Festival 'Dag in de Brandig' for contemporary music, Montalbâne Festival (Germany), Festival Classique (The Hague), The Jerusalem Music Center (JMC), with the Israeli Philharmonic in Tel Aviv and many more.

 

She has sung in both Opera and Concert, under the baton of Sigiswald Kuijken, Jules Buckley, Jos Vermunt, and many others. Reut has performed with countertenor Michael Chance at Shanghai's World Fair, and with Soprano Claron Mcfadden and the Metropole orchestra. She has performed and recorded with Steven Devine (London Baroque), Fabio Bonizzoni (La Risonanza) Charles Toet (Late Renaissance Festival, Modena), Peter van Heyghen (Utrecht Early Music Festival), and has sung main roles in music theatre productions with Muziektheater Transparent (BE) VocaalLAB (Silbersee Opera NL), Studio Minailo, Voi-zi, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Radio France Orchestra, et al. Reut holds a Bachelor and Master's degree from The Royal Conservatory of The Hague in Early Music singing and Baroque Gesture and acting, as well as Bachelor's degree in Opera and Art-song from The Jerusalem Music Academy. Reut has also been accepted in 2011 into the Opera Studio at the Israeli National Opera in Tel Aviv, and is a regular recipient of the America-Israel scholarships in Voice.

 

Reut is a Vocal Improviser, and a versatile vocalist, and has released 5 Jazz/Improv albums with KrisXa (Krakow); She collaborates in classical tonal Improvisation with improvisation master and pianist David Dolan (London). She works regularly with known Jazz/ World music musicians such as Chris Hinze (NL), M.Pomianovska (PL), W. Nadishana (Berlin) and more, where she combines her vocal expertise in Sephardic, Arabic, Balkan, Hebrew, Andalusian, Greek and many other traditions of singing, with improvisation of both text and music.

 

Izabella Effenberg is one of very few female Jazz vibrafonists in Europe and the first from Poland.  After finishing her classical percussion studies in Poland she decided to move to Germany in order to develope artistically and started her Jazz studies. She received her diploma in 2012 and finally achieved her Master degree in 2014.

 

During her studies in Poland and Germany she received various scholarships und won several prices in competitions both for performance and composition. She played with different well known musicians such as Tony Lakatos, Leszek Zadlo, Nippy Noya, Nicole Johänntgen, Magnus Öström, Steffen Schorn, Efrat Alony, Norbert Nagel, to name a few. Besides her career as Vibraphon soloist and Bandleader she started to write and arrange her own music for different Bands in a variety of musical styles.

 

Her debut CD „Cuéntame“ was recorded at the Bayrischer Rundfunk and supported by the cultural department of the city of Nuremberg. On this CD she is accompanied by topclass german musicians and the well-known singer Efrat Alony from Israel.

 

Apart from that she founded a annual Vibraphon festival in Nürnberg/Fürth in order to introduce her instrument to a wider public. New CD "IZA" was awarded 3rd place at the The 38th Annual JazzStation Awards / The Best Jazz of 2016 Category Vibes / Marimba and presents a very rare instrument: Array Mbira. Izabella was also 8x Polish Shotokan Karate Master and won a silver medal at the European Champianship in 1999.

 

The debut album by a Polish Jazz quintet led by clarinetist / composer Szymon Klima, which also includes saxophonist Dariusz Rubinowski, guitarist Jakub Mizeracki, bassist Adam Kowalewski and drummer Jakub Miarczynski. The album presents six pieces, which are all interpretations of Polish Folklore in the widest meaning of the idiom, including even Polish Hassidic music, and also include some improvised and inspired motifs created by the quintet members.

 

 

 

In 2017 Klima, as a member of the Improvision Quartet, released one of the best Polish Jazz albums of that year, the fantastic "Free-Folk-Jazz", and this album is in many respects a continuation of the same approach, although the sound is somewhat different. Instead of the wonderful piano parts, which placed the music closer to the Free Jazz milieu, on this album the guitar takes the music more into Free Rock direction. But the basic characteristics of the previous album, which are above all about the intimate conversations between the musicians and the mutual development of ideas, are still here.

 

Szymon Klima was born on 18th of December 1984 in Cracow. He began his musical education on the clarinet at the age of 8. When he was 10 years old he was invited by Brad Terry – an American jazz clarinetist to take part in a concert during the II International Clarinet Festival in Piwnica pod Baranami in Cracow. He performed together with leading Polish jazz musicians: Zbigniew Wegehaupt and Joachim Mencel. Szymon’s jazz debut was received enthusiastically by the audience and, as a result, he was invited by Brad Terry to play once again with the same musicians and a Dutch trumpeter Ewert Hekkem.

 

In 1998 he performed as a soloist with the Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra conducted by Adrian Brown during the II European Congress EuroCass being a part of EU programme “Kaleidoscope”. The conductor together with the Orchestra invited Szymon to London and in 1999 they performed G. Finzi’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra. London newspapers responded to the performance with headlines mentioning the “Prodigy of Poland” and the concert itself proved to be a huge success giving evidence of the high level of the youngest generation of Polish instrumentalists. In 2000 a remarkable British clarinetist David Campbell reminisced about the performance in a specialist magazine “The Clarinet”. He wrote: “…One of the highlights was hearing Simon aged 14 playing the Finzi concerto really musically. Simon Klima has great talent and is going to be a top star in the future”.

 

In July 1999 Szymon took part in the Clarinetfest in Ostend (Belgium) organized by an American association ICA. In October 2001, during the tournee of Cracow Youth Philharmonic in the Netherlands and Belgium, he performed as a soloist in C. M. Weber’s Concerto in E-flat major and each time he was awarded with a standing ovation.

 

Szymon participated in master classes conducted by renown clarinet players, such as Guy Deplus (2003, 2005) and David Campbell (2001).