TIP. MusikZeit looks at the Greek jazz scene under the title "Faust & Helena". The first MusikZeit concert at the Telegraph features the self-proclaimed "power-electronics-power-drums-speednoise-duo" ddAa on stage. If you think that's dangerous, you're quite right: this music is loud, shrill, dissonant, chaotic, electronic, improvised. The Greek-Berlin composer Anissegos brings in his influences from new and electronic music, contemporary jazz and the interplay with dance and video artists, the Franconian-Berlin drummer Steidle his background from Soko Steidle, Klima Kalima, Der Rote Bereich and others.
Together with four of the most important musicians of the current Greek jazz scene, Baby Sommer commemorates in "Songs for Kommeno" the victims and descendants of this Greek village, where the German Wehrmacht committed terrible crimes in 1943. Different musical traditions of Greece and Sommer's percussive playing are subtly mixed in it.
The concert with Athina Kontou & Band at naTo is about the very personal story of a young musician who was born in Frankfurt am Main as the daughter of Greek parents and has been at home in two countries ever since. "Greek music for me, however, has only ever been in Greece," says Athina Kontou, who studied at HMT Leipzig. For MusikZeit, the double bassist is now exploring for the first time whether and how her identity as a jazz musician and her Greek roots are connected.