NIGHTHAWKS live @ NICA Jazz Club

The electro-jazz group Nighthawks takes the stage. The time of the Nighthawks has come.

With their sound, the band has found its way into the ears of many generations. Jazz, backbeat, rock, and pop—a wonderful blend that sometimes pays homage to Steely Dan, honors Miles Davis, or even celebrates the folky side of Bob Dylan. A quintet with its ears firmly in the here and now, yet steadfast enough to capture the major musical trends and mold them into a style all their own.

Over the past 25 years, Nighthawks have evolved from a studio-based duo into a collective. A five-piece band fueled by the individual voices of its members.

The band embodies a shared spirit that is firmly rooted in both jazz and rock. All the musicians are sound tinkerers who succeed in setting visual imagery to music using a film-score-like approach—from the wet, nocturnal asphalt streets of New York to church steeples standing in the shimmering heat of isolated Mexican desert villages.

Each song shines a spotlight on an imaginary film setting. Few German bands have so clearly stylized their aesthetic parameters—melody, groove, and sound—and worked so hard on their distinctiveness. Above all, it is certainly Reiner Winterschladen’s sensitively played trumpet—at times a radiant fanfare of new beginnings, at other times fragile and introspective, with the fragility of jazz.