Week-End Fest XV

Opek GENA Zena Upsammy & Valentina Magaletti

Tickets

In 2026, the Week-End Fest will celebrate its 15th anniversary. Founded in 2011, the festival is best known for its diverse and extraordinary music lineup. The carefully curated program features international artists from a wide range of genres—from pop and jazz to electronic and experimental music.

Gilles Peterson (DJ)
As the driving force behind the global jazz revival, the legendary DJ, curator, and radio host bridges genres without boundaries and has been shaping musical tastes for years through Brownswood, Worldwide FM, and his influential show on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Daddy G (Massive Attack) & Don Letts (DJs)
Daddy G and Don Letts bring together two generations of British bass culture—from punk, reggae, and sound system roots to the revolutionary trip-hop of Massive Attack—and celebrate a musical legacy that continues to resonate today.

GENA
The duo, consisting of singer Liv.e and drummer and producer Karriem Riggins, blends hip-hop, neo-jazz, and R&B with playful ease and extraordinary chemistry. They have just released their debut album, *The Pleasure Is Yours*.

Zena
Inspired by Ethio-jazz and Amharic tradition, the duo bridges the gap between jazz, folk, and beatmaking, infusing it all with a contemporary London flair—raw, soulful, and synthetic—while confidently reinterpreting a rich musical tradition.

Upsammy & Valentina Magaletti
Their album *Seismo* transforms the architecture of a museum into an ever-changing tapestry of bleeps, pads, field recordings, and inventive percussion—dense yet airy, and constantly in motion.

Opek
Opek’s third album, *Trafo*, blends hazy hip-hop grooves with profound jazz, drawing inspiration from Japan, Brazil, and the U.S. Relaxed yet powerful, it’s tailor-made for basement clubs and rhythmic head-nodding.

Gyrofield (DJ)
Kiana Li has breathed new life into drum & bass with futuristic, psychedelic productions and razor-sharp DJ sets. From Hong Kong to Bristol to Utrecht, her uncompromising sound has earned her recognition from Metalheadz and a steadily growing fan base.

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.

more info

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