Cologne-based trumpeter and composer Frederik Köster is constantly on the lookout for innovation and reinvention in Jazz. At the Dottendorfer Jazznacht this week he also showed that he had found excellent  contributors to his vision in young musicians Jannis Sicker, Calvin Lennig and Dominik Mahnig. Be prepared to experience an evening of excellently improvised fresh jazz music – but don’t expect to be able to take it away to enjoy at home. Dark Matter, as the band are called, do not do ‘takeaways’

The theme of Folk Club Bonn meeting number 165 was ‘Partytime’. In retrospect it should have been ‘Sing-a-long Night’. A plethora of neatly typed lyric sheets arrived on the tables at Dotty’s well before the evening started. Obviously quite a few musicians had spotted that we had a choir on the list tonight – not that the extra trained voices were needed. Folk Club audiences have always subscribed to the simple rule of singing along and keep changing your key until the people around you stop staring in your direction. It always works for me anyway.

It’s twelve years since Eric Sardinas last set foot on the Harmonie stage. He played such a blinder of a set then that I even bought a t-shirt. ‘Respect Tradition’ it says on the back and Sardinas doesn’t just respect tradition, he dusts it off and turns it up to 10 on a rusty looking resonator guitar that looks like it was dug up at the crossroads right after midnight. If you like your music restful and sweetly melodic, you’re in the wrong concert hall tonight my friend. If however you like it rough around the edges and neat like a strong glass of bourbon, this might just be heaven.

We’re mid-way through the set at Bonn Harmonie. Danny Bryant lets his guitar hang down loose from his shoulder as he steps up to the microphone and introduces the song ‘Tougher Now’. “Two years ago I stopped drinking. I nearly died”, he says. Then he pulls the guitar back up to his chest and begins a song that came out of those dark days – ‘Tougher Now’. We are seeing a leaner a happier and indeed a tougher Danny Bryant from the last time I saw him here at Bonn Harmonie in 2019, and, as many a musician has found before him, the music hasn’t suffered or creativity dried up. Songs played from the new disc ‘Nothing Left Behind’ stand up against everything that went before.

Just checking the bio of Joo Kraus and I am amazed to find the man in the baseball cap with seemingly boundless energy onstage is undertaking his 60th Anniversary tour this year. A perfect time to reflect on those 60 years and also a perfect subject for the very first ‘Jazzportrait’ presentation by Christian Ottens (aka Yassmo).

I can scarcely believe it, but the T-shirts don’t lie. Ruf Records’ Blues Caravan has been travelling round the globe since 2005. Tonight it was the turn once again of Bonn Harmonie to host Thomas Ruf and his stars for the evening: Laura Chavez, Elise Frank and Matthew Curry.

A big shout-out to Richard Münchhoff. The talented young local drummer proves to be equally talented on vocals and guitar for the first ever single release by his band Munchy Bunch titled ‘Never Gonna Stop’. Fans of the Foo Fighters will love this this one with its urgent, high adrenalin attack. a promising start indeed for the local lads.

“Raw, energetic, and straight in your face” is how Munchy Bunch describe their sound, and with ‘Never Gonna Stop’ they deliver on all three fronts – need I say more?

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In case you’re not a geographer, Wiki describes Pangea Ultima as “a hypothesized future supercontinent, expected to form in approximately 250 million years as tectonic plate movements, specifically the subduction of the Atlantic Ocean floor, cause the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia to collide into one landmass”. The German Jazzband of the same name melts together continental musical forms rather than continental plates. Bandleader José Díaz de León even joked that we might have noticed this happening – It certainly made for a bit of a whirlwind of music at times on this, the opening night of Dottendorfer Jazznacht 2026.