NICA exchange: Luise Volkmann/ Kiko Dinucci

In spring 2023, Cologne-based musician Luise Volkmann, supported by NICA artist development, visited Brazil for the first time with her saxophone. Since living in the coastal city of Natal for a year as a student in 2008, she had returned again and again, but never to make professional contacts. Now, during her first artist residency in São Paulo, she met the guitarist Kiko Dinucci. He has his musical roots in punk and rock on the one hand and in the Brazilian musical tradition of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) on the other. As an uncompromising composer and guitarist, he founded internationally renowned bands such as Metá Metá and Passo Torto.

This meeting resulted in the joint album Enxame: 30 minutes of improvisation in which the sounds of different musical traditions are fused experimentally - never shying away from the rhythmic - and powerfully. It is not for nothing that these cross-connections, which are condensed into expressive and touching music by this duo, bear the name "Enxame" (meaning "swarm"): The knowledge of each other, the understanding for each other and the experience with each other is expressed here in the form of intelligent swarm music and Volkmann and Dinucci's dense harmony impressively involves the listener in this feeling. In summer 2025, Kiko Dinucci and Luise Volkmann will be on tour together for the first time.

While the monthly concert series 'NICA live' focuses on the projects and musical preferences of the NICA artists themselves, the 'NICA exchange' program also has an international focus and presents promising projects from neighbouring European countries in double concerts with the aim of creating and strengthening a sustainable network of collaboration on and behind the stage. The second act of this evening will be announced shortly.</i