Überjazz Festival 2024

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ÜBERJAZZ PLAYLIST 2024

Since 2010, ÜBERJAZZ Festival at Kampnagel has been showcasing how jazz, soul, hip hop, ambient, and other forward-thinking styles converge to create future-facing post-genre music. In 2024, the lineup features legends such as New Age pioneer Laraaji and Spiritual Jazz pioneer Kahil El’Zabar with his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, alongside Grammy-nominated drummer and producer Kassa Overall, and music activist Moor Mother, a frequent guest at Kampnagel. A day ticket grants access to three halls where concerts take place simultaneously, allowing for free movement between them.

Line Up Friday, November 01

MOOR MOTHER

Few artists have released music as relevant to the present moment as U.S. musician and activist Camae Ayewa, also known as Moor Mother. After »Jazz Codes«, where she explored the traditions of Black U.S. music and its fight for freedom, her 2024 album »The Great Bailout« followed: Moor Mother’s engagement with British colonial history in an avant-garde, poetic sound artwork influenced by jazz, noise, and hip-hop.

SVEN WUNDER PLAYING »EASTERN FLOWERS«
The NEW YORK TIMES compared Swedish composer Sven Wunder to Ennio Morricone. Wunder’s work spans from Southeast Asian jazz to samba and Anatolian rock. On his debut album »Eastern Flowers« (Piano Piano Records), Wunder fused the latter with jazz-infused funk and breakbeats to create such a laid-back groove that hip-hop artists like Danny Brown have worked with his compositions. At his first-ever concert in Germany, Sven Wunder will perform his groundbreaking debut album live.

FLOCK
Another Hamburg debut – from a British supergroup with individual ÜBERJAZZ stories: Bex Burch, Sarathy Korwar,Tamar Osborn (Collocutor, Unknown To Known), Danalogue (The Comet Is Coming, Soccer96), and Al MacSween(Kefaya) will release their second album »Flock II« (Strut Records) at the festival. Recorded in a converted country church in Wales, Flock showcases how intense, complex, and simultaneously captivating a musical dialogue can sound.

ROGÊ
Grammy-nominated guitarist and singer Roger José Cury, performing under the artist name Rogê, is on the verge of joining the ranks of Brazil’s greatest singer-songwriters. In 2023, Rogê released his album »Curyman« on Diamond West Records, the label of musician and producer Thomas Brenneck (Lady Gaga, Jay Z, Charles Bradley). The album, filled with lighthearted samba-funk and Brazilian soul, is a »modern Brazilian masterpiece« (Gilles Peterson).

COLE PULICE
Cole Pulice is a saxophonist, improviser, and composer from Oakland, California. They play beautifully crafted electroacoustic ambient music that sounds ethereal and meditative, earning recognition not only from Pitchfork as »Best New Music.«

TARA CLERKIN TRIO
With their debut album, this Bristol-based trio landed at No. 35 on THE WIRE's list of the best albums of 2020. Tara Clerkin, Pat Benjamin, and Sunny Joe Paradisos create a distinctive sound between dubby minimalism and smudged acid-jazz using looped clarinets, vocals, samples, keys, and percussion.

IBELISSE GUARDIA FERRAGUTTI & FRANK ROSALY
With »MESTIZX« (International Anthem, 2024), Bolivian-born singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago jazz drummer Frank Rosaly deliver a musical meditation on decolonization and the power of rituals and protest. A »fascinating, eclectic mix of styles« (HVV Mag), blending Latin music, avant-garde jazz, post-rock, folk, and minimal music.

SONIC INTERVENTIONS
Spiritual jazz, highlife, house, desert blues, Latin, hip hop – this Berlin-based collective unites styles and people from five continents. Their debut album »Do You Remember?« will be released in November, offering a musical dance of memory, identity, healing, and collective experience.

JEREMIAH CHIU & MARTA SOFIA HONER
The combination of modular synthesizer and viola is rare – and even rarer is it as captivating as with the Los Angeles-based duo Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer. Their debut »Recordings from the Åland Islands« (International Anthem, 2022) is an impressionistic soundscape »just beyond the edge of reality« (Pitchfork). This year, they released »The Closest Thing to Silence«, a collaboration with New Age legend Ariel Kalma.

DORA MORELENBAUM
Dora Morelenbaum is at the forefront of Música Popular Brasileira’s new wave. After a celebrated performance as a member of the Brazilian Latin Grammy-winning group Bala Desejo at ÜBERJAZZ Festival 2023, Morelenbaum returns to present her debut album »Pique«, produced by Ana Frango Elétrico.

Line Up Saturday, November 02

KAHIL EL’ZABAR’S ETHNIC HERITAGE ENSEMBLE
U.S. multi-instrumentalist Kahil El’Zabar has been a pioneer of Afrocentric spiritual jazz since founding the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble in 1973. To mark the ensemble’s 50th anniversary, he released »Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit« (Spiritmuse Records) in 2024, solidifying his contribution to »Great Black Music.« Performing live with the four-piece Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, El’Zabar becomes the »medium of a musical history that merges avant-garde, pop, and blues traditions alike« (Tagesspiegel).

LARAAJI
In 1979, Brian Eno saw New York street musician Laraaji playing the autoharp in Washington Square Park. A year later, Eno produced his debut album in his Ambient Series, leading to a prolific career. Several of his albums have recently been reissued by labels like Numero Group and Leaving Records, with Pitchfork naming »Segue to Infinity« Best New Reissuein 2023. The album cements Laraaji »as an preeminent figure in ambient and new-age music’s history.« At Kampnagel, the 1943-born laughter meditation practitioner, pianist, zither, and mbira player will show live why he’s hailed as a »pioneer of ambient music« (New York Times).

FARHOT PLAYING »STEALING FROM CATS«
Farhot is one of Germany’s most important producers, having worked with artists like Talib Kweli, Haftbefehl, and Max Herre. Since 2016, his label Kabul Fire Records has expanded hip-hop traditions from Hamburg to far eastern regions. Four years after his last album, an acoustic journey through his hometown of Kabul, Farhot returns with »stealing from cats,« an eclectic blend of samples drawn from the dusty archives of jazz history paired with instrumental downtempo hip-hop artistry. Exclusively live at ÜBERJAZZ!

RESAVOIR
Chicago-based trumpeter and composer Will Miller has collaborated with hip-hop greats like SZA and A$AP Rocky and risen to indie pop stardom with the band Whitney. With his project Resavoir, which brings together Chicago’s avant-garde jazz and improv scene, Miller has released two albums on International Anthem. Resavoir’s signature soul-jazz sound, reminiscent of David Axelrod (HVV Mag), 70s library music, and late-era Miles Davis, will be presented at his Hamburg debut with synthesizers, pianos, drums, trumpet, and electronically processed sounds.

KASSA OVERALL
Kassa Overall is a U.S. drummer, producer, and rapper whose smooth blend of hip-hop beats and jazz drumming was a highlight of the last ÜBERJAZZ Festival. His latest album, »Animals« (Warp Records), features guest appearances from rappers Danny Brown and Lil B, and musicians like Theo Croker and Vijay Iyer, dissolving the boundaries between hip-hop and jazz. With 12 tracks of »real artistry« (The Guardian), »Animals« sounds »like nothing else out there« (HHV Mag).

EDDIE CHACON & THE ZENMENN
In 2022, after a 30-year hiatus, the voice behind the hit »Would I Lie to You?« returned to the stage alongside John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Solange Knowles) at ÜBERJAZZ Festival. Eddie Chacon’s comeback album was released on Stones Throw, and in 2023, he returned to ÜBERJAZZ, this time accompanied by Berlin trio The Zenmenn. Chacon will perform again this year with The Zenmenn, showcasing a new album that will be released in January on Stones Throw.

THE ZENMENN
The Berlin trio The Zenmenn are not only excellent company for Eddie Chacon, but also standout headliners in their own right. With their 2021 debut »Enter the Zenmenn« (Music From Memory), they delivered a compelling blend of Balearic and AOR sounds.

ANOTHER TASTE
With their self-titled debut album, this four-piece Dutch concept band has crafted a 2024 masterpiece of boogie, 70s funk, and obscure disco. Released on the Space Grapes label by DJ and producer Danilo Plessow aka MCDE, Another Taste will perform live with a seven-member ensemble, including singer Sarina Voorn.

COLLETTIVO IMMAGINARIO
This Italian instrumental jazz trio from Los Angeles blends contemporary beats with 70s electronics to create a »sundowner sound.« For example, if you want to know how the southern tip of the Lido in Venice sounds, check out »Alberoni« (Domanda Music, 2024), the latest release from this sun-loving trio.

GROUP LISTENING
For ten years, Paul Jones and Stephen Black have reinterpreted ambient classics from Robert Wyatt to Laraaji using piano, clarinet, and artfully crafted papier-mâché hats. Now, on their latest release »Walks« (PRAH Recordings), the English duo flex their own creative muscles by combining field recordings of frogs with obscure 80s MIDI controllers. »A quietly wonderful experience« (Clash Magazine).

ROSA BRUNELLO
Rosa Brunello is an Italian bassist and composer whose range spans from free improvisation to electro-rock, dub, and South American music. This is impressively demonstrated on her album »Senseless Acts of Love« (Domanda Music, 2024), which features collaborations with British trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and Egyptian musician and producer Maurice Louca.

COMBO ASPIK
This slick session band project, led by bassist, producer, and DJ Magic Manfred, showcases a love for the boogie, jazz-funk, and disco sounds of the 70s and 80s. With top-tier Berlin musicians, Manfred released a self-titled debut album on Ouvo Records and developed a live version that makes it clear why this combo is dubbed a »party and entertainment service« on Instagram.