IN BETWEEN SPACES: Warm-Up

Maha Maamoun "Domestic Tourism II"
Maurice Louca Elephantine Band

The warm-up for the new series of events IN BETWEEN SPACES, which will be dedicated - above all on a musical and cultural level - to the interactions, connections and conflicts between Africa and Europe, presents Maurice Louca and Maha Maamoun, two outstanding contemporary Egyptian artists.

The musician, composer and producer Maurice Louca is one of the most exciting and productive figures in Egypt's vibrant experimental music and art scene. After two internationally acclaimed solo albums - "Garraya" and above all "Salute the Parrot" (2014) - with "Elephantine" he presented his most elaborate and mature work to date. For an ensemble of 12 musicians* from Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Turkey, Denmark and Sweden, he composed a 40-minute suite of six pieces in which different genres and sound worlds flow together at the open border between composition and improvisation: elements from African and Yemeni music, the cosmic avant-garde jazz of Sun Ra, Arab melodies, modal "celebrational music" and modern minimalism, dirty swinging free jazz.

"Consistently defying and destroying the walls of genre, Maurice Louca is a musical dynamo; ephemeral, and perpetually unpredictable." scene noise

In her film montage "Domestic Tourism II", the Cairo artist Maha Maamoun works exclusively with excerpts from Egyptian films from the 1950s to the 2000s set against the backdrop of the pyramids. The film explores how these iconic historical monuments are detached from the "timelessness" of the tourist postcard view and inscribed into the urban narratives of the respective political, social and historical present of modern Egypt.

Line-up Elephantine Band:

Tommaso Cappellato: Drums
Ozun Usta: Drums/Percussions
Rosa Brunello: Double Bass
Mattias Stahl: Vibraphones
Piero Bittolo Bon: Alto sax
Daniel Gahrton: Baritones/Alto Sax
Rasmus Svale: Tuba
Isak Hedtjarn: Bass Clarinet
Maurice Louca: Guitar

A cooperation of ZAM Zentrum für Aktuelle Musik e.V. with the Akademie der Künste der Welt / Cologne and the European Centre for Jazz and Contemporary Music in the Stadtgarten.

Supported by the TURN Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation

Presented by
WDR COSMO & City Review