Bachelorabschlusskonzert: Ben Jones - Saxophon | live recording

gossamer: Ben Jones - Altsaxophon Philip Weyand - Piano Jonas Evenstad - Percussion

SATIN APE: Ben Jones - Altsaxophon Philip Zoubek - Piano Roger Kintopf - Bass Marius Lamm - Schlagzeug

(english: see below)

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Ben Jones schließt mit diesem Konzert sein Bachelor-Studium an der Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln ab. Er präsentiert zwei Projekte, die aus dem Studium hervorgegangen sind:

gossamer (ein sehr feiner Spinnenfaden) bezeichnet etwas Zartes und Fließendes, das zugleich stark ist. Die Gruppe möchte Musik schaffen, die dieselben Eigenschaften besitzt. Das neue Projekt Satin Ape verbindet Einflüsse aus freier Improvisation, Jazz und Metal und hat zum Ziel, die Ästhetik von „heaviness“ in einem überwiegend akustischen Kontext zu erforschen.

gossamer: Ben Jones - alto saxophone Philip Weyand - piano Jonas Evenstad - percussion

SATIN APE: Ben Jones - alto saxophone Philip Zoubek - piano Roger Kintopf - bass Marius Lamm - drums

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With this concert, Ben Jones is completing his bachelor’s degree at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. He will present two projects that emerged from his studies: gossamer (a very fine spider’s thread) refers to something delicate and fluid that is also strong. The group aims to create music that possesses these same qualities. The new project, Satin Ape, combines influences from free improvisation, jazz, and metal, and aims to explore the aesthetic of “heaviness” in a predominantly acoustic context.

Further information

Venue:

LOFT

The LOFT in Cologne's Ehrenfeld district is exactly what its name suggests: a spacious loft on the top floor of a former perfume factory. Since 1989 it has been home to the city's musical avant-garde as well as a scene hub and a jazz laboratory for students.

Over those decades it has grown into a respected stage for improvised music, contemporary music, and jazz, with a reputation reaching well beyond Germany. Most of the Cologne jazz musicians who have made their mark nationally and internationally in the past thirty years took their first career steps here, among them Nils Wogram, Hayden Chisholm, Angelika Niescier, Frank Gratkowski, Robert Landfermann, Pablo Held, and Sebastian Sternal.

The Cologne Triennale, WDR, and Deutschlandfunk stage concerts and recordings at the LOFT, and the venue has been invited to the Moers Festival five times. Its own label, 2ndFloor, releases selected recordings, and more than 1,000 live and studio productions made in the LOFT studio have appeared on other labels. Supported by the association 2ndFloor e. V. and the collective jungesloft, it presents over 200 events a year.

Top-tier instruments – including a Steinway D grand, one of the finest concert pianos in any German jazz club – a professional recording studio with award-winning engineers, and the room's distinctive atmosphere have drawn many prominent guests, from Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, and Peter Brötzmann to Kurt Rosenwinkel, Marilyn Crispell, and Jim Black. Still, the programming focus remains on supporting Cologne's own musicians.

Since 2009 the LOFT has received the NRW venue programming award every year, an honor that specifically recognizes work with emerging regional artists. In 2016 the British Guardian named it one of the ten best jazz clubs in Europe, and at the German Jazz Prize it was voted "Club/Venue of the Year" in 2021 and again in 2023 — a category decided not by the expert jury but directly by the more than 1,300 members of the German Jazz Union.

more info

More dates at LOFT: