EJC 2026 - Showcase-Programm Tag #1

The international jazz world is coming to Cologne as part of the European Jazz Conference 2026. Over 400 organizers, festivals, labels and industry representatives from all over Europe will meet in the city to discuss the future of jazz and improvised music.

A centerpiece of the conference is the public showcase festival: selected German ensembles present themselves live in front of an international audience of experts - and in front of you. For three days, you will experience some of the most exciting current voices in German jazz in special Cologne venues.

A rare opportunity to discover tomorrow's scene today.

Showcase program day #1
24.09.2026

22:30 - 23:00 | Concert hall
Sera Kalo`s eX.II

Sera Kalo was born and raised in the US state of Conecticut as Christine Servaine. She came to Dresden in Germany via New York in 2009, where she studied jazz singing at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music for several semesters. She now lives in Berlin, the German capital with its international artist scene has become a place of political self-discovery for Kalo, just as Berlin has become the creative environment for her to shape her own music. In it, she combines free jazz with soul and hip-hop, combining her political awareness and social conscience with a quiet poetry to bring the smallest nuances and every detail to the surface. For Kalo, jazz is not a musical genre. Rather, her jazz is an attitude with which she absorbs the events around her in order to reflect her immediate surroundings and transform them into music.

23:20 - 23:50 | JAKI
MALSTROM

In 2010, drummer Jo Beyer formed Malstrom with guitarist Axel Zajac and tenor saxophonist Salim Javaid while studying music in Osnabrück. The decision not to fill the bass position was a conscious one: they knew how the music had to sound without bass, because it would be played collectively by three improvisation artists acting as equals. Meanwhile, Florian Walter is the saxophonist in Malstrom; this personnel change has made little difference to the concept of this trio. It is not the usual jazz that the three bring to the stage. Rather, it is improvisational music that aesthetically draws on many sources. With Malstrom, it can rock loudly and switch to brute drones, the music can be completely "free" and condensed into clusters of notes, and the melodic and harmonic elements are not neglected either. The unagitated hybridity is explained by Malstrom's roots in the present.

The concerts are partially seated. There is no entitlement to a seat.

The concert hall is wheelchair accessible | The JAKI can only be reached via a staircase and is therefore unfortunately not wheelchair accessible

Photography is not permitted.