Mounir // Frith / Santos Silva / Portugal // Nilssen-Love

The evening on the Big Stage opens with an audiovisual concert performance by Egyptian multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir, who revives the microtonal music of Egyptian female singers from the 1920s. Afterwards, guitarist Fred Frith, an icon of improvised music, meets trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and drummer Mariá Portugal in free-spirited trio improvisations before Paal Nilssen-Love shares the ring with his fellow Circus musicians*.

17:30 / German premiere

Nancy Mounir: "Nozhet El Nofous"

(EG, DE, UK, DK)

At Jazzfest Berlin 2021, Egyptian musician and artistic researcher Nancy Mounir presented a cinematic version of her extraordinary album "Nozhet El Nofous" (2022). The video work was part of a digital program focus on artists* from Cairo, São Paulo and Johannesburg, who could not travel to Berlin due to the pandemic.

This year, Mounir and her project can finally be experienced live in Berlin. Together with her quintet from Egypt and a string quartet from Berlin, she presents arrangements of selected pieces by Egyptian singers whose voices were made to sound during the Congress of Arabic Music in Cairo in 1932, when the regional variability of tuning systems was standardized, thus excluding a variety of microtonal approaches. Mounir has brought the voices of these singers back to life by transferring their vocals from old 78 RPM recordings and embedding them in dazzling new arrangements, poignantly revealing the extent of the displacement of that time. Mounir's video work from 2021 culminated in a performative intervention at the Institute of Arab Music, where the congress was held 91 years ago. Her Berlin debut this year continues to move between Arab tradition and contemporary elements and is accompanied by new archival footage. Mounir makes these old recordings accessible to a new generation - all the more so because the original old texts address ideas and emotions that have been made taboo for female-read by subsequent generations in Egypt. In this sense, Nancy Mounir is not only an archivist, but also a visionary.



Line-up

Nancy Mounir - violin, theremin, various instruments

Youssra El Hawary - accordion

Nadia Safwat - trumpet

Thodoris Ziarkas - double bass

Mounir Maher - piano

Local musicians

Meike-Lu Schneider - violin

Julia Brussels - violin

Maria Reich - viola

Anil Eraslan - cello

Speakers

Katia Halls - subtitles

18:45

Frith / Santos Silva / Portugal: "Laying Demons to Rest"

(UK, PT, BR)

British guitarist Fred Frith is one of the big names in experimental music as a passionate improviser. As a founding member of Henry Cow, he helped get experimental rock rolling in the 1960s. The band broke up a little over a decade later. In the meantime, Frith had developed his own improvisational language for electric guitar, with which he undermined any stylistic convention, and in parallel introduced new extended techniques. His signature: free-spirited narratives, far away from any formulaicity. But Frith has also been involved in a number of musically formative projects in various other constellations - from the jump-cut ethos of John Zorn's Naked City to the crunching art rock of the experimental band Massacre with Bill Laswell to the captivating sound he created as Skeleton Crew together with cellist Tom Cora.

Frith has been collaborating with Portuguese-born Susana Santos Silva for several years now. While the virtuoso trumpeter was initially a guest player in his trio, the two have recently come together as a musically inventive duo. Santos Silva, who played an unforgettable set with pianist Kaja Draksler at the Pierre Boulez Saal at Jazzfest Berlin 2021, is also characterized by an extraordinary openness to different styles. Originally located in the classical jazz tradition, their musical practice continues to push into new terrains. Thus, on their recently released debut album, "Laying Demons to Rest," they spare no experimentation in telling musical stories of emotional weight, marked by playful digressions, surprising twists, and an elusive timbre.

For their performance at Jazzfest Berlin this year, they will be joined by the versatile drummer and composer Mariá Portugal, who wowed at Jazzfest Berlin last year with her band Quartabê. Frith and Portugal, who was born in São Paulo, as well as Santos Silva and Portugal already met last year - it is high time that they now meet in this promising trio.



Line-up

Fred Frith - electric guitar

Susana Santos Silva - trumpet

Mariá Portugal - drums

20:00

Paal Nilssen-Love: "Circus"

(NO, DK, SA)

In recent decades, few musicians* have been on the road as much as Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. When the pandemic made traveling impossible in one fell swoop, he used the unaccustomed free time to launch a new band. With this fantastic ensemble, Nilssen-Love explores new territory beyond the wild free jazz to which he committed himself as a member of The Thing, as leader of the Large Unity Big Band, and in countless other contexts.

He remains a driving force in the new septet with the programmatic name Circus - only he shares the ring more freely than before with his new fellow musicians, among whom the South African actress and singer Juliana Venter stands out in particular. On 2022's sensational album "Pairs for Three," she is present not only as a singer but also as a performer: she conjures up voices, tells stories, and transforms the drummer's mix of original pieces and traditional Brazilian themes into a fragmentary narrative. The group maneuvers remarkably gracefully between chaos and groove, through danceable rhythms, sweaty improvisations and wild tumult. Most of the musicians have longstanding collaborations with Nilssen-Love: trumpeter Thomas Johansson, saxophonist Signe Emmeluth, accordionist Kalle Moberg and bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen have all played in Large Unit - and newcomer Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir on guitar adds a melodic touch.



Line-up

Juliana Venter - vocals

Thomas Johansson - trumpet

Signe Emmeluth - alto saxophone

Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir - guitar

Kalle Moberg - accordion

Christian Meaas Svendsen - double bass

Paal Nilssen-Love - drums