NICA live: Beha // Volkmann present Miriam Elhajli solo // Witch 'n' Monk

‘Authentic, heartfelt and sincere’ is how Miriam Elhajli has travelled the path that has led her to her unique, unmistakable sound on voice and guitar. The singer, composer and improviser lives and works in New York and is also a researcher at the Association for Cultural Equity, a non-profit organisation dedicated to researching and preserving music, dance and oral traditions. Elhajli spent many summers of her childhood in Venezuela, singing with her grandmother and was also influenced by Irish, British and Scottish folk music through various stages of her life. ‘I'm always drawn to what feels alive, and it doesn't matter what idiom the music is in, it only matters how alive it feels to me,’ says Elhajli, who released her debut ‘Observations’ in 2020 on the independent label Numina Records, which she founded. To get you in the mood for Miriam Elhajli's solo set, we recommend ‘Caramba / Shula’ from her most recently released live album ‘Live At Noguchi’. Heart-warming.

Witch ‘n’ Monk is the duo of Colombian flautist Mauricio Velasierra and British soprano and guitarist Heidi Heidelberg. By combining a wide variety of instruments - traditional Latin American flutes, unconventional vocals, electric guitar and customised electronics - they create a sound that is entirely their own. The duo has developed an uncompromising new musical language of composition and improvisation that moves fluidly between forms. Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics mingle with a jazz-punk-guitar-bass hybrid. Their last album ‘Witch “n” Monk’ from 2020 was released by John Zorn's label Tzadik Records and was named ‘Contemporary Album of the Month’ by The Guardian and awarded the German Critics' Choice Award in the Crossover category.

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The concert series "NICA live" offers creative freedom for ten currently supported NICA artists: Sophie Emilie Beha, Marlies Debacker, Ray Lozano, Fabian Dudek, Kira Hummen, Theresia Philipp, Stefan Schönegg, Laura Totenhagen, Luise Volkmann and Rebekka Salomea Ziegler.

NICA artist development offers outstanding musicians from North Rhine-Westphalia who work in the field of jazz and contemporary music a platform for artistic profiling and professionalisation of their careers. The artist development programme, which is based at the European Centre for Jazz and Contemporary Music at Stadtgarten Köln and funded by the state, has been in existence since 2019.