Katharina Ernst and Gard Nilssen as Artists in Residence at the 42nd Jazzfestival Saalfelden

With Katharina Ernst and Gard Nilssen, two internationally successful drummers, Mario Steidl, the artistic director of the festival, has nominated two artists this year who will each bring four different projects to the stage.

 

KATHARINA ERNST
Irritation and composition, the over- and attacking compilation seem to be the top priority for Katharina Ernst, studied percussionist and painter. The artist, who was born in Vienna, studied in France and lives in Berlin, especially appreciates the performative and chaotic, the polyrhythmic and metrical aspects of her percussion, which is often supplemented electronically and has been her means of expression since the age of nine. Music, art and choreography complement each other in her work, from the theatre stage to the gallery or concert hall to the club. Katharina Ernst is always moving, in motion, also in the numerous, different projects in the context of her "residency" at the Jazzfestival Saalfelden 2022.

 

VENTIL
Thursday, 18.08. | 09:00 p.m. | Short Cuts | Kunsthaus Nexus
VENTIL is a discharging energy package, an "audiovisual band". Delicate, shimmering and hard sound particles are combined with rhythmic structures as powerful as they are complex, and visually framed by live-generated video and light architectures. 

 

SORTIE D'ATELIER
Friday, 19.08. | 04:15 p.m. | City Tracks | Kunsthaus Nexus
The French expression Sortie d'Atelier literally means "what leaves the studio" and thus denotes the possibility of gaining an insight into an artistic working process. No finished show is presented, no finished exhibition, no final programme, but a phase, a status quo, an excerpt. On this occasion, the audience comes into contact with the process of becoming, with the search for form.

 

EXTRAMETRIC
Saturday, 20.08. | 03:00 p.m. | City Tracks | Gruber Halle
Extrametric is the name of Katharina Ernst's debut solo record, released in 2018. She explores polyrhythms in a variety of ways, ranging from groovy tracks to abstract compositions and ecstatic outbursts on the drum set.

 

CHILDREN'S WORKSHOP: THE BIOTOPE OF ANIMALS
Sunday, 21.08. | 11:00 a.m. | Rookies Programme 
Together with children from kindergarten age, Katharina Ernst will craft their own shakers from various materials. In the second part of the workshop, the children learn different ways of playing with the instruments they have made themselves, such as forte, pianissimo, accelerando, deccelerando as well as listening to each other and communicating with the instrument. At the end, a small composition will be performed using the techniques learned. 

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GARD NILSSEN
Drummer, composer, sonic adventurer - 39-year-old Norwegian Gard Nilssen is one of the most exciting and consistent musicians on the current European scene. Born into a family in Skien where "everyone played drums", Gard Nilssen is on tour with his own bands and as a drummer in the Maciej Obara 4tet, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra or with Thomas Dybdahl at least 200 days a year. The "vintage drum freak" can be heard on over seventy recordings - such as "Artist in Residence" at the Jazzfestival Saalfelden 2022. 

 

BUSHMAN'S REVENGE
Friday, 19.08. | 10:45 p.m. | City Tracks | Gruber Hall
"Sounds like Cream playing music by Coltrane, Alice and John remixed by Arne Nordheim or Karlheinz Stockhausen", say Bushman's Revenge themselves. For at least fifteen years and ten albums, this "semi-acoustic" trio from Norway has been bundling heaps of rock energy and jazz freedom into noisy sound sculptures. "Insanely good", as the British Jazzwise found.

 

GARD NILSSEN ACOUSTIC UNITY
Saturday, 20.08. | 01:30 p.m. | Short Cuts |Kunsthaus Nexus
For eight years, drummer Gard Nilssen, saxophonist André Roligheten and bassist Petter Eldh have formed an Acoustic Unity. Their third album already bore a reference to Ornette Coleman in the title, the band name reminds of Albert Ayler. The power that unfolds in the intimately connected yet free interplay of these three individuals is, however, completely original - and sensational.

 

CUONG VU INVITES EVEN HELTE HERMANSEN & GARD NILSSEN
Sunday, 21.08. | 11:00 a.m. | Mountain Tracks | Kollingwald
Invited by Vietnamese-American trumpeter Cuong Vu and together with Bushman's Revenge colleague Even Helte Hermansen on guitar, Gard Nilssen will add "abstract soundscapes" to the forest clearing of Kollingwald.

 

GARD NILSSEN'S SUPERSONIC ORCHESTRA
Sunday, 21.08. | 03:00 p.m. | Mainstage | Congress Saalfelden
Nilssen describes his sixteen-piece Supersonic Orchestra as a "barely tamed, beautiful monster". Energetically and experimentally, they bring together the precision of Count Basie with the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti and the free spirit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Monstrously good, also in the interplay of composed elements and group-dynamic improvisation. "If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours" is their motto.

 

The 42nd Jazzfestival Saalfelden will take place from 18-21 August 2022. You can expect a festival with about 60 concerts in the town, in the woods and meadows, musical walks in the midst of our beautiful mountains and of course some surprises again.