NICA live: RAY LOZANO | Release-Konzert "#4a79b1"

Ray Lozano (vocals) Gabriel Dennhoff (keys) Fritz Dinter (bass, guitar) Niclas Schneider (drums) tba. (backing vocals) tba. (backing vocals) tba. (backing vocals)

Tickets

What happens when you’re in your mid-thirties and realize that your life is quietly changing? Relationships dissolve, friendships take on new forms, and old versions of yourself disappear almost unnoticed. It’s a phase of life between saying goodbye and a new beginning: between the feeling of having arrived and the sense that something new is beginning. That’s exactly where RAY LOZANO comes in. The Cologne-based singer and producer presents new music on #4a79b1 via Melting Pot Music. Co-produced by her longtime musical partner Samon Kawamura, she blends warm soundscapes, subtle grooves, and precise arrangements into a distinctive form of contemporary R&B, where jazz, soul, and electronic influences intertwine.

#4a79b1 is less a color than a state of being: a blue for the moments in between. For modern relationships, old patterns, longing, nostalgia, and the small goodbyes that life in one’s mid-thirties brings. Lozano’s songs transform these subtle changes into something auditory: intimate and rich in detail, rhythmically precise, and open to new forms. Her music moves between R&B, soul, and electronic sounds, while always remaining personal.

Ray Lozano has been a NICA artist since 2023 and has used this time to establish herself internationally from her base in Cologne: among other things, with her COLORS show, a nomination for the 2026 MME Award, and concerts from London to Groningen. The release concert now marks the conclusion of her support through the NICA artist development program and, at the same time, another artistic step forward: With #4a79b1, Ray presents her third release—and with it, a further evolved, more distinctive version of her sound.

Further information

Venue:

Stadtgarten

The first concert in the newly built Stadtgarten concert hall in the mid-1980s launched a program unlike anything Germany had seen: an independent, artistically driven concert series devoted to contemporary improvised music. It was guided neither by attendance figures nor by public subsidies, yet it guaranteed musicians minimum fees and was run on professional terms. The conditions mattered just as much: an acoustically optimized, street-level concert space offering a strong setting for audiences and performers alike. Operations were financed through the adjoining hospitality business, the Stadtgarten restaurant and beer garden, a model that drew attention well beyond Germany.

Today the Stadtgarten Köln ranks among Europe's internationally recognized venues for contemporary and improvised music. The American magazine Down Beat features it regularly in its listings; it has received Germany's federal APPLAUS venue program award several times, including "Venue of the Year" in 2016, followed by the German Jazz Prize in the same category in 2022. More than 400 events across the full spectrum of contemporary music now take place there each year. Its international standing rests above all on the high proportion of demanding, experimental programming.

A programming mission of this kind depends on reliable public support. The venue's 30th anniversary in September 2016 opened that prospect: through a partnership between the City of Cologne and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, programming work is being substantially strengthened, and from 2017 onward the Stadtgarten Köln is being developed step by step into a "European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music" – with the goal of becoming one of Europe's leading music centers.

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