KLAENG Festival 2018 – Jazz and Improvisation in North Rhine-Westphalia

The destination of this press trip in November 2018 was the Cologne KLAENG Festival.

The festival, founded and directed by the eponymous KLAENG Jazzkollektiv, a group of equal artistic directors, has been presenting a diverse programme since 2010. The KLAENG Jazzkollektiv is particularly concerned with a musical experience that allows one to be directly and unfiltered present in the process of music creation and to experience sounds in their most original form. Improvised music has always played a major role at the festival, although one looks in vain for a focus, because the separation of music into genres is far from KLAENG's mind.

In addition to the numerous concert visits during the festival, the guest of the International Visitors Programme from the USA had the chance to exchange ideas with local, national and international journalists and artists as well as with the musicians and directors of the festival, Jonas Burgwinkel, Tobias Christl, Pablo Held, Tobias Hoffmann, Niels Klein, Frederik Köster and Robert Landfermann.

Also on the guest's agenda was a visit to the LOFT, another historic jazz venue in the city of Cologne alongside the Kölner Stadtgarten, the festival's venue.