Ensemble Ambidexter - Jazz/Neue Musik

Founded in 2018 by Dutch violinist Floortje Beljon, Ensemble Ambidexter is an eight-piece ensemble from Leipzig on a radical borderline between contemporary serious music, jazz and quotes from such a colorful palette of genres and eras that a clear stylistic classification will leave the listeners in disbelief. Chamber music meets jazz quartet. Or the other way around?
Four classically trained and four jazz-trained musicians open doors, take a quick look inside to take in the most beautiful views and put them together in their music. Somehow organized like a band, but at the same time like an orchestra, freedom and improvisation can be found in the music, as well as the realization of notated, concrete visions of the composers (including Teresa Allgaier, Oene Van Geel) who write for the peculiar line-up.
In recent years, the ensemble's main motivation has been to bring its music to unusual places where it would not normally take place and has played numerous concerts in kindergartens, nursing homes, hospices and prisons.
The self-titled debut album Ensemble Ambidexter (V.Ö. April 2024 via TELESKOP) documents the octet's maturing process and shows in a touching way how it sometimes catapults art decisively forward when supposedly contrary entities intertwine and fire each other up - just like in the eponymous ambidexterity, an equal dexterity of left and right hand.