CRUTCHES

Jan Frisch – gtr/b Olga Reznichenko – keytar/synth Laure Boer – electr Valentin Schusters – dr

Tickets

Crutches is actually a quartet led by Leipzig-based guitarist Jan Frisch (who is often heard playing a double-neck instrument with an electric bass). But the focus is on the keytar played by Olga Reznichenko, a, let’s call it suitcase instrument, combining a guitar and
a keyboard. That still doesn’t begin to explain the stylistic hybrid of jazz-rock, metal, math rock, punk, Krautrock, and noise, because Crutches is a collaborative band that is most compelling when its members play their music in perfect harmony, as if born of the moment.

Even, and especially in this unbalanced diversity lies an aesthetic urgency that comes to the fore when dystopian sounds from the analog and digital toolkit collide with the shrill, squealing feedback of the electric guitar, while harshly pounded rhythms harshly pounded on the drum set shake the very foundation of music itself, and the keytar defines the harmonic space with just a few notes. This is provocative because it roughly and rawly avoids aesthetic clichés. Yet it also reveals an artful acrobatics that is as overwhelming as it is comical.

Further information

Venue:

artheater

Since opening in 1998, the artheater in Cologne's Ehrenfeld district has brought together a club, a concert venue, and a stage for theater productions under one roof. Three principles guide its programming: range, cultural subculture, and political responsibility.

The venue is deeply rooted in Ehrenfeld and sees the neighborhood's development as part of its own story. In recent years it has gained a growing number of neighbors with whom it cultivates musical diversity, with the shared aim of keeping Ehrenfeld a home for alternative nightlife.

Three formats shape the jazz side of the program. Jazzorama, the weekly Tuesday session, is the city's longest-running jam session series. Twice a year, the Artheater also hosts Jazz Against the Machine. The Latin Session rounds out the calendar once a month on a Wednesday.

Between club nights, concerts, and theater productions, the Artheater remains a place where jazz appears not as a genre kept apart but as part of a broader cultural program – one that links Cologne's improvised music to the nightlife of the surrounding district.

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