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CGNYC – Kalia Vandever

LOFT

CGNYC – Kalia Vandever

Kalia Vandever – trb Simon Jermyn – gtr Florian Herzog – b Jonas Burgwinkel – dr

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In jazz and improvised music, it is often said that what matters most is the moment when musicians first come together. Cologne-based bassist and bandleader Florian Herzog has embraced this philosophy for his concert series “CGNYC – Cologne meets New York City,” for which he has been inviting instrumentalists from New York to Cologne for the past three years. So far, Herzog has invited cellist Marial Roberts, saxophonist David Leon, vibraphonist Sasha Berliner, saxophonist Anna Webber, and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, among others, for a first meeting on one of Cologne’s stages.

For Cologne Jazzweek 2026, there is now a special edition of “CGNYC – Cologne meets New York City,” for which he is bringing trombonist Kalia Vandever to LOFT for a joint improvisation. After studying at the Juilliard School in New York, they have established themselves in contemporary jazz as a musician with chamber-music finesse, a sensitive feel for timbre and form, and an experimental openness.

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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.

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More dates at LOFT: