PANDAjazz: STOLYAR / BRAND / RUPP

In the organizer's words:

Roman Stolyar — piano
Ulrike Brand — cello
Olaf Rupp — guitar

ULRIKE BRAND is a cellist, performer, and composer. Through innovative playing techniques, she has developed her own unique sonic world on the cello. Her projects transcend boundaries, extending into the realms of language, dance, performance, and visual art. Her compositions occupy the space between improvised and notated music. She writes essays and leads workshops and guest lectures. From 1987 to 1997, she was the artistic director of the Quaderni Perugini di Musica Contemporanea in Perugia, Italy. In 2016, she was a fellow at the Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, and in 2020 at the Komponist:innenforum Mittersill. She has received numerous grants. Since 2018, she has been a lecturer in improvisation at the Berlin University of the Arts.

www.ulrikebrand-cello.com

OLAF RUPP performs improvised music on the classical guitar and the electric guitar. His organically flowing thematic developments arise neither by chance nor through a dominant act of will. For him, it is important that a maximum degree of concentration, focus, and presence is always at play, both in dense, loud music and in sparse, sparse music. In his music, he deals extensively with the noisy timbral effects of spectralistic sound fields. In this context, every single note is a distinctive point of color within a sound matrix, and this unique “timbre” is more important than the note’s position within conventional systems of organization. He has also collaborated internationally with many key pioneers of improvised music, such as Paul Lovens, Tristan Honsinger, Peter Brötzmann, Butch Morris, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, and Michael Wertmüller. He performs outstanding solo concerts on both the classical guitar and the electric guitar. Important current groups include the duo XENOFOX with Rudi Fischerlehner, the duo with cellist Ulrike Brand, and WEIRD WEAPONS with Tony Buck and Joe Williamson.

www.olafrupp.de

Berlin-based Russian composer and pianist ROMAN STOLYAR is often called one of key figures in Russian improvised music. He has performed in 27 countries collaborating with a number of internationally renowned improvisers, including Dominic Duval, William Parker, Vinny Golya, Oliver Lake, Susan Allen, Thomas Buckner, Glen Hall, and many others. His improvisational workshops have garnered him an international reputation, and have led to many invitations to create and implement workshops for organizations and universities around the world. He is an author of the first Russian book on teaching free improvisation.

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, Roman Stolyar expressed his open protest against war and growing repressions in Russia and composed a chamber piece dedicated to victims of the Butcha massacre. Finally, because of his anti-war activity, he was blacklisted by the Russian ministry of culture and was forced to flee from Russia. He is currently living and working in Berlin, collaborating with a large number of Berlin-based improvisers/Starting from October 2025 he is teaching at the University of Arts Berlin (UdK).

https://romanstolyar.bandcamp.com/

https://romanstolyar.bandcamp.com/
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