Panel talk: Quo vadis Jazz?

With Donya Solaimani, Ryan Carniaux, Florian Anger and Gabriele Maurer.

Donya Solaimani(opens in a new tab) is a singer, guitarist and composer who lives in Cologne and Berlin. Her music oscillates between pop, minimalism, indie and contemporary jazz. She likes short songs, big tunes and coriander on everything. She wanted to start playing the accordion at the age of seven before her sister successfully convinced her to take guitar lessons instead. She played guitar and bass in many bands, but behind closed doors she wrote songs and dreamt of becoming a pop star. Donya studied classical guitar, jazz singing and philosophy in Berlin, Cologne and Copenhagen.

Gabriele Maurer(opens in a new tab) works as a saxophonist, composer, teacher, volunteers as a board member of the German Jazz Union and in the Federal Technical Committee for Music of the German Music Council in Berlin. The multi-instrumentalist freely moves back and forth between different genres. Whether part of Luise Volkmann's Free-Jazz Large Ensemble at the Cologne Jazz Festival, with Philipp Poisel's pop production on tour or her own band act GABRIELE on various festival stages across the country: Contagious playing pleasure and authenticity are their trademarks.

Ryan Carniaux(opens in a new tab) was born in New York City and studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, majoring in jazz trumpet. He currently lives in Cologne and is a professor of jazz trumpet at the Folkwang University of Arts, where he is also head of the jazz department and teaches theory, ear training, ensemble and jazz history in addition to trumpet and improvisation. He has played on over 100 recordings and has recorded and toured with artists such as Bob Moses, Jerry Bergonzi, Misha Mengelberg, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Globe Unity Orchestra, Wolfgang Lackerschmid, Mark Egan and many others. Carniaux has released seven albums as a band leader and composer and regularly performs in Europe and the USA.

Florian Anger(opens in a new tab) is a drummer, composer, arranger and bandleader originally from the Ore Mountains. After his instrumental training in classical percussion and pop drums, he is currently studying jazz and popular music at the HMDK in Stuttgart with Eckhard Stromer, Rainer Tempel and Fabian Arends. Together with his long-time percussion duo partner Samuel Joseph, he founded the band ‘Searching for Home’ in 2016, which still exists today and won the Sparda Jazz Award and the Jazzfruit in 2023, among others. He regularly composes and arranges for the large ensemble and is also responsible for booking and release management. He also works as a sideman in various projects in the Stuttgart jazz scene, as a musical drummer at the WLB Esslingen and as a teacher at the Musikverein Weilimdorf.‍

Moderated by Dr Michael Köhler, born in Düsseldorf in 1961, trained as a bookseller, employed, studied German and philosophy, M.A. 1988, doctorate in 1991, freelance author and presenter at Deutschlandfunk (among others) in the field of culture since 1997.