NICA live: Felix Hauptmann SEEN

With SEEN, Cologne-based pianist, composer, and NICA artist Felix Hauptmann brings together musicians whose artistic styles are as distinctive as they are open to collective processes. The project takes as its starting point selected material by and from the circle of the American pianist and composer Carla Bley, who passed away in 2023. On this evening, her compositions will serve as one of several reference points for improvisations that repeatedly draw on this material and develop new paths from it.

The concert in the Green Room, the open-air stage at Stadtgarten Köln, will mark the first time this lineup has performed together. Hauptmann has invited his colleagues Michael Attias on saxophone, bassist Dieter Manderscheid, and Oli Steidle on drums—specifically because of their individual musical language and the distinctive sounds they bring to their respective instruments, and he anticipates an evening that is both exciting and sonically intimate.