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Gabby Fluke-Mogul, violin, viola [USA]
Maria Portugal, drums [Brazil, D]
Paula Sanchez, cello [Argentina/CH]
Photo © Cristina Marx aka Photomusix
Gabby Fluke-Mogul is a Brooklyn-based violinist, improviser, composer, educator and organiser. Weaving within experimental threads of improvised musics, her playing has been described as “embodied, visceral and virtuosic” and as “the most striking sound in improvised music in years.”
Among their countless improvisation partners are Nava Dunkelman, Joanna Mattrey, Ava Mendoza, Charles Burnham, Fred Frith, Luke Stewart, Zeena Parkins, Tcheser Holmes, Lotte Anker, Susana Santos Silva, Dave Rempis, Lily Finnegan, Nate Wooley, Lester St. Louis, William Parker, Dimos Vryzas and Pauline Oliveros, as well as many other musicians, poets, dancers and visual artists.
[Source: www.flukemogul.com/about.html]
On her 2022 solo release on Relative Pitch Records, Best of Jazz writes: “LOVE SONGS is graspable within the first seconds of play. It has a rare density… infinitely beautiful and magnificently poignant.”
Mariá Portugal
Brazilian drummer, singer, composer and producer Mariá Portugal has been active in São Paulo’s music scene for more than 20 years. After being invited to the Moers Festival in 2020 as Improviser in Residence, she stayed in Germany, where she has found a new artistic home.
She has toured Europe, South America, Asia and Oceania, performing with artists such as Elza Soares, Arrigo Barnabé, Metá Metá, Pato Fu, Fernanda Takai, Maggie Nichols, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Joe McPhee, Angelika Niescier, John Edwards, Nick Dunston and Tomeka Reid. As a composer, she has created and presented original music for dance, theatre and cinema. From 2021 she curated the Soundtrips-NRW concert series in Duisburg for several years and continues curating the concert series TOMA CHOCOLATE! at Berlin’s Sowieso in 2025.
Paula Sanchez
Situated at the crossroads of experimental music, free improvisation and performance art, Paula Sanchez’s work focuses on the composition / decomposition of a mutable sound space.
With a strongly interdisciplinary profile, she first found her voice as a performer and composer in theatre and performance art. She completed her music studies in cello at the University of San Juan (UNSJ), Argentina, and later earned two master’s degrees: one in Improvisation at the Musik Akademie Basel and another in Contemporary Art Practice/Sound Art at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB), Switzerland.
Since 2018, Paula Sanchez has been active in contemporary music and improvisation circles across Europe, participating in numerous concerts and projects in Switzerland, France, Germany and Spain. Her work is characterised by the use of extended techniques and unconventional playing methods, incorporating materials such as plastic, glass and natural elements, combined with voice and electronics.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
This concert is made possible also by the Federal Culture Prize Applaus, which Offene Ohren e.V. was awarded in autumn 2024.
John Edwards, bass [GB]
Alex Ward, clarinet, guitar [GB]
Mike Gennaro, drums [USA]
Photos © Mike Gennaro
John Edwards, Mike Gennaro and Alex Ward don't need any warm-up time. From the very first moment they unleash an intense, vibrant and pulsating interaction that unfolds in free communication, entirely free of conventional formulas and stereotypes.
The fascination of their instrumental conversation stems primarely from its radical openness: no melody and no set metre dictates the direction here – the discourse is created instantaneously, in the very moment of playing. Their wordless, direct rhetoric reveals a lightning-like perception and deep intimacy, yet it also embraces confrontation: impulsive insistence, vehement counter-arguments, unexpected interjections – all of this forms an essential part of their repertoire.
And yet, nothing is random. John Edwards above all seems less concerned with merely playing the instrument than with living in symbiosis with it – a relationship that is both conflictual and inseparable. Everything proceeds with imaginative rigour, even as chance elements and high tension shape certain passages. At times, the air is deliberately let out of the improvisation, the focus narrowed to the most minimal sounds and tiniest shifts – only for the playing fire to flare up again the next moment.
Joy in playing, intensity, authenticity – that's what it is all about.
It's remarkable that this trio only came together this year. All three have long been part of London’s improvisation scene and know one another well from different projects.
Alex Ward commands both guitar and clarinet with equal assurance and has performed with Derek Bailey, Dominic Lash, Steve Noble, Hannah Marshall and Gail Brand, among others.
Canadian drummer Mike Gennaro first made his mark on the free jazz scene in 1996 with a solo percussion album – a bold step that spoke volumes about his self-confidence as a drummer. He gained wider recognition about 25 years ago in a trio with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and guitarist Kurt Newman.
Since the 1990s, bassist John Edwards has been one of the most active figures on London’s improvised music scene. His performances are always an event – not least because he treats the entire body of the double bass as a playing surface, constantly revealing fresh and surprising sonic ideas.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
Dieter Manderscheid, Bass [D]
Martin Blume, Schlagzeug [D]
Frank Paul Schubert, Alt- und Sopransaxofon [D]
Fotos © Hannes Schneider
Spindrift is an outstanding trio of second-generation German free-jazz musicians, comprising saxophonist Frank Paul Schubert, bassist Dieter Manderscheid and drummer Martin Blume.
The three are far less interested in the consumer-oriented side of the music industry than in their shared passion for playing. Every performance holds the anticipation of the new and the unknown. That their music is not commercially driven is no drawback but rather a mark of artistic freedom.
This is the quiet joy of Spindrift: their destiny lies entirely in their own hands – and so does their music. We watch and listen as they turn labour into art. At every moment, the trio creates an asynchronous, off-kilter and yet beguilingly beautiful sound world.
Martin Blume is an improvising musician who is also active as a composer and organiser of music festivals.
Dieter Manderscheid began as an orchestral musician and performer of contemporary classical music, and as early as the 1980s helped shape the scene as a member of the pioneering Cologne trio Wittek–Kaiser–Manderscheid.
Frank Paul Schubert moves primarily within freely improvising contexts and has made a name for himself as an uncompromising explorer of sound.
All three have been frequent guests of Offene Ohren e.V., with Martin Blume appearing at the association’s very first concert in 2004, back then alongside Wilbert de Joode and John Butcher. More than 300 concerts later, Martin Blume, Dieter Manderscheid and Frank Paul Schubert return together as Spindrift to the Offene Ohren e.V. stage.
Welcome back!
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
Rudi Fischerlehner, drums [A]
Marta Warelis, piano [PL / NL]
Florian Stoffner, guitar [CH]
Photo © Dawid Laskowski
We welcome a new and thrilling trio that unites three dynamic figures of the European jazz and improvisation scene, fusing influences from jazz, contemporary music and noise into a trance-like, improvised flow.
Piano – guitar – drums: a demanding and complex instrumental combination, challenged by the inevitable interference between the specific chordal intervals of piano and guitar and their underlying harmonies. All the more remarkable is the natural ease with which this trio transforms such a complex constellation into a vibrant musical trialogue.
The music that emerges here exists only through the magic of free, collective improvisation, where each of the three musicians assumes responsibility for the whole and the very idea of a “solo” disappears – replaced by a breathtakingly organic interweaving of sounds played at full speed.
The trio’s musical empathy elevates the already exceptional level of each individual improviser and transports them into a rare state of trance. This collective shaping of sound goes far beyond mere individual “musicianship”.
To weave their playing together, the three employ a rich palette of techniques: pulsating figures, repetitions, telegraphic cadences, sudden outbursts, dotted lines and phase-shifted electric textures, together with the sparkling, tingling resonance of piano strings. As the improvisations unfold, the music becomes hypnotic, electrifying and at times otherworldly.
The intensity of penetrating empathy and restless energy is phenomenal. Wild force unfurls with extreme precision – both in the rhythmic surges at the climactic peaks and in the finely poised spaces between, where incisive interjections, lively accents, sharp strikes and pinpoint detonations interact to the split second. Hallucinatory.
Amsterdam-based pianist Marta Warelis is known for her solo projects and collaborations with musicians such as Wilbert de Joode, Ab Baars and Kaja Draksler. Following her appearance at the MMI Festival in May and her concert with the Dave Douglas Quartet in July, this marks her third performance at MUG this year.
Zurich guitarist Florian Stoffner has worked with Paul Lovens, Rudi Mahall, Chris Corsano and John Butcher, and was last heard at Offene Ohren e.V. in late May with John Butcher and Chris Corsano.
Berlin-based drummer Rudi Fischerlehner has released two solo albums and is a member of the bands Xenofox, Der Dritte Stand and Gorilla Mask. He, too, is no stranger to Offene Ohren e.V., having appeared at the end of 2023 with the trio Der Dritte Stand.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
The friends of improvised music of the Offene Ohren e.V. would like to thank the Kulturreferat München for its continuous help allowing to present improvised music in Munich.