KLAENG Festival #1

Andria Nicodemou & Floros Floridis / Thomas Morgan Solo / Golnar Shahyar Quartett

Andria Nicodemou & Floros Floridis
Floros Floridis is one of the most interesting interdisciplinary artists: he impressively demonstrates that no art is ever really isolated, artistic and personal expression are closely linked. Born in 1959 in Thessaloniki, he studied physics, classical clarinet, opened himself to improvised music and played with important protagonists of free jazz. The fact that he composed some of the most beautiful music in European cinema for Jeannine Meerapfel's feature film "Anna's Summer" testifies to his openness to other forms of expression and perspectives. With Andria Nicodemou he meets a no less open, daring sound artist on the threshold of kinetics and theatricality. Violinist Gunda Gottschalk and percussionist Dominik Mahnig complement the energetic quartet as virtuosic improvising "sound workers". The concert is part of the series Soundtrips NRW in cooperation with KLAENG.

Thomas Morgan Solo
Thomas Morgan's solo performance could hardly be more fitting and at the same time more exciting at the center of today's concert triptych. Far more than a mere hinge providing a moving link between two fundamentally different elements of avant-garde and avant-rock, Morgan functions, as it were, as the unifying "longitudinal axis" of the entire KLAENG Festival. "For me," Morgan once said, "music has always been the most natural and profound way to share something with people." Thomas Morgan "solo", that is the pure essence of his many sound possibilities.

Golnar Shahyar Quartet
Superlatives precede Golnar Shahyar, and indeed, the Tehran-born singer, composer and poet truly has something of a "millennial voice"! Every note she sings exudes pure magic, behind every seemingly effortless gesture, every encouraging smile, her breathtaking control over rhythm, melody, pitch and timbre is revealed. Born in the time of the First Gulf War, she builds profound and deeply moving musical as well as cultural bridges, connecting music with pressing social concerns. Influenced by singers such as Joni Michell and Betty Carter, Fairuz and Hayedeh, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh and Omou Sangare, Golnar Shahyar is above all always one thing: Golnar Shahyar. At the Klaeng Festival she plays with exciting musicians of the Austrian jazz and improvisation scene. Her new album "Tear Drop" (GolNar Quintet + String Quartet) will be released at the end of the year on KLAENGrecords.