NUEJAZZ Festival dazzles with a focus on British jazz

Mathias Eick looks happy. The audience cheers him and his soulful, hymn-like, dreamy, but sometimes rhythmically gripping music. His soulful trumpet sounds are very well received. The Norwegian also has a personal connection to southern Germany. One of his grandmothers lived in Ravensburg. And, aptly, he also plays from his album Ravensburg at the NUEJAZZ Festival. After so much emotionality, the Julian Lage Trio might have had a hard time getting the sold-out Great Hall of the festival's main venue, the Kulturwerkstatt Auf AEG in the west of Nuremberg, in the mood again. But the US guitarist and his two strong partners Jorge Roeder on bass and Eric Doob on drums manage to keep the audience smiling in no time. Lage comes across as charismatic, without any power pomp and thick clouds of sound, enchanting with fine sound pictures and improvisations, which always sound like himself despite all the reminiscences of his country's music history and musical styles.

NUEJAZZ also focuses on names that are still quite unknown in Germany, like the Balimaya Project or the Neue Grafik Ensemble (pictured below). Both bands are based in London and offer concerts for a curious audience. In the case of the ten-piece Balimaya Project, driven by several percussionists at once, the groovy Afro-jazz is based on the traditional Mande music of West Africa. Saxophone and trumpet dab jazzy notes, the kora reminds of the roots. Bandleader Yahael Camara Onono, a percussionist with West African roots, creates entertaining dancefloor-ready music with his band, which offers instrumentalists with African roots living in the UK a musical home with a connection to their roots. Neue Grafik is the name of London-based Afro-French keyboardist, house DJ and producer Fred N'Thepe, who plays funky, energetic nu-jazz with the ensemble named after him, pushed by driving broken beats from the drums. It is music which certainly doesn't reinvent the genre but is a lot of fun heard live in Nuremberg.   

The Seed Ensemble, founded six years ago by the British alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi, also has 10 members with Blue Note sounds meeting soul, Afrobeats and driving grooves. Kinoshi has arranged the music in a sophisticated, sometimes almost clinically cool way and leaves the field more to her musicians for solo excursions than highlighting herself. Presenting songs with political messages is also important to Kinoshi. Some of the songs sound angry this evening, also due to the power of the six wind players in the band. And yet they always stay on track. Melanie Charles, US-American singer and musician with Haitian roots, picks up original songs by Dinah Washington or Abbey Lincoln and plays with their samples and then transfers them to modern times and interprets them in a completely different way with her huge voice and coolness, driven by drummer and keyboarder. This hip mix of jazz, soul and a little bit of Caribbean seduces and does not miss its effect on the pleasingly young audience in the Z-Bau, the second and largest venue of the festival.

NUEJAZZ 2022 was a lot of fun, also with its London focus in this year´s programme. And with discoveries that appealed to young people and attracted them in large numbers, especially on the last two days of the festival, despite one of the top acts, popular British drummer Yussef Dayes, cancelling at the last minute due to unforeseen circumstances.

The two festival organisers Frank Wuppinger and Marco Kühnl, both professional jazz musicians themselves, have developed an exciting festival that also attracts new interested people to jazz with some free concerts and an afternoon for children. Next year NUEJAZZ will celebrate its 10th birthday and the festival can certainly look to their future with confidence.