Sparks & Visions festival, Regensburg: a beautiful festival in a beautiful city

A German premiere always means that you can't really know the project on stage unless you've already heard it somewhere abroad. At the third edition of her lovingly curated Sparks & Visions festival in beautiful Bavarian city Regensburg, Anastasia Wolkenstein has programmed the opening evening in the city's 200-year-old theatre with three German premieres. Lots of fresh sounds and plenty to discover.

Greek vibraphonist, percussionist and songwriter Evi Filippou played a highly acclaimed duo concert with German-Romanian double bassist Robert Lucaciu at the last Sparks & Visions. Both have now returned to Regensburg with Filippou's sextet inEvitable, featuring the Polish singer Zuza Jasinka, who sings in Greek, as well as a guitarist, drummer and saxophonist. In their luggage: exciting fusions of Greek folklore, jazz and improvised music, the singer in particular was enchanting. Trombonist and composer Robinson Khoury, a shining star on the current French jazz scene, was even more impressive with his trio project MŸA and multi-layered, Middle Eastern-rooted, spherical sounds. He set his trombone blasts in electro-acoustic soundscapes, repeatedly pairing them with sung, modulated vocalises, synthesiser and piano sounds from keyboardist Léo Jassef and the dazzling, electrifying rhythmic world of percussionist Anissa Nehari.

Singing in Pashto, the language of her father, poetic ballads played on violin, six-string electric bass and percussion, jazz and the soul of Afghanistan combined - all this characterised the quartet of Simin Tander, the Cologne-based singer, who occasionally also showed what an extraordinary improvising vocal artist she can be.

Immediately afterwards female quartet O.N.E. did not sound as soulful as Tander's concert. Poland's first all-female jazz quartet with saxophone, piano, double bass and drums (percussionist Patrycja Wybrańczyk pictured above – Photo by Peter Hundert) focussed on other aspects, namely playing free jazz collectively, full of ifresh deas , without confusing ‘free’ with wild arbitrariness and dissonance. 

At the end of the festival, the Marcin Wasilewski Trio (pictured aove - Photo by Peter Hundert) showed just how perfect ensemble playing can sound. The Polish pianist has been playing together with his two compatriots Slawomir Kurkiewicz on double bass and Michal Miskiewicz on drums for 31 years now, and you can hear this in every moment of the trio's fantastic interplay. What a creative flow the three of them have developed over the years! Yes, the music is totally checked out, their own pieces and one composition each by Herbie Hancock and Krzysztof Komeda offered no surprises in Regensburg, but one beautiful melody after another and great craftsmanship.

With Sparks & Visions, Anastastia Wolkenstein has created a varied, three-day jazz event for Regensburg with a lot to see. For example corto.alto, five Scots around the trombonist and multi-instrumentalist Liam Shortall, who braved the storm over the British kingdom and travelled from Glasgow to turn the theatre into a cool club on Saturday evening with their hip, groovy sounds. Or on Sunday morning, where the North Sea String Quartet, an international string quartet based in Amsterdam, did not care about conventions, but worked with beat structures and percussive techniques and totally enchanted the already very enthusiastic Regensburg audience with the great stylistic diversity of their contemporary music.