For the 2024 season opening, our Kiezsalon returns to the Zionskirche for a full weekend program. Friday features meditative moments with Denmark-based zitherist Blue Lake, experimental vocalist Antonina Nowacka from Poland and sound healer C. Lavender from the USA, all making their Berlin debuts. Saturday continues with Joe Rainey, Ka Baird and Zoh Amba.
Regrettably, due to circumstances beyond our control, Joe Rainey and C. Lavender have had to cancel their European tours. It’s a situation we could not predict, and we are genuinely sorry and hopeful they will be able to join us next year. We are happy to announce that Colorado-based singer-songwriter Josephine Foster and Kyiv-born, Tallinn-based violinist Valentina Goncharova are stepping up to the plate.
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Polish singer Antonina Nowacka has a penchant for crafting dreamy, minimalist soundscapes by combining trans-cultural, acrobatic vocal techniques with experimentation in sound synthesis. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, she released Lamunan in 2020, her solo debut conceived in the caves of Indonesia. Unsound commissioned her and Sofie Birch to create the collaborative album Languoria, issued in 2022.
In describing her “distinctive voice and way of singing,” The Quietus has stated: “She opens a small portal to a world not quite the same as this one.”
Described by The Guardian as “a dreamily unique talent”, singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Josephine Foster breathes new life into archaic forms. She has lent her warbling mezzo-soprano and interpretive wit to nearly two decades of self-produced recordings. Her songs are rooted in early American folk-blues as well as classical art song and Tin Pan Alley.
Ka Baird is a New York City-based musician, composer and powerhouse performer. Their live sets include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and woodwind instruments, spanning structured conversations and improvisation. Ka’s ritualistic delivery aims for an extreme form release through physical exertion and psychic extension.
As Pitchfork put it, “This is heady music with a physical presence: an intensely private communion with some unnameable, unknowable other, translated into a force you can feel in your bones.” They have released albums on Drag City and RVNG Intl., the latter having issued their album Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos in March.
The Zionskirche, inaugurated in 1873 and renovated just last year, was built in a neo-Romanesque style on a 52-metre-high vineyard at one of the highest altitudes Berlin. Its 67-metre tower offers a panoramic view of the city, and its gardens are ideal for lingering before and after the concert with a glass of wine – especially on a warm spring evening.
