Mingo Rajandi & Duo DEAE (Eesti–Poola) • Jazzkaar 2023

Jazzkaar is very happy to celebrate Tallinn’s becoming a UNESCO City of Music in cooperation with the JazzArt festival of the other UNESCO City of Music, Katowice, inviting some of the most outstanding Polish jazz ensembles to perform together with esteemed local jazz musicians, to combine their world-views and creative energy to create new exciting soundscapes. At this year’s Jazzkaar, bass player and composer Mingo Rajand and the Polish duo DEAE (Zofia Ilnicka and Ola Rzepka) will join their creative forces in free open improvisation as a Tallinn-Katowice joint band. The concept of freedom, which is one of the greatest values in jazz music, has acquired an immense importance and urgency universally as something that must never be taken for granted.

Mingo Rajandi is a composer and double bass player, artistic director of several ensembles and initiator of various interdisciplinary projects. She has been awarded the title of Jazz Composer of the Year and she also won the Estonian Theatre Award for the best original music for the production at the Estonian Drama Theatre, Double Bass. As a composer Rajandi is known for her original creations mixing jazz and contemporary music, and for her cross-genre connection with other artistic forms of expression. She regularly performs with the ensembles Mingo Rajandi Quintet and Trio Maag and composes for musicians with both an academic and improvisational background and for special projects.

DEAE is a duo for flutes, percussion and electronics. The starting point is mainly medieval works by Hildegard of Bingen transformed into partially composed contemporary improvised material. Zofia Ilnicka is a flutist, composer, improviser drawing inspiration from the music of Brian Ferneyhough, Dominik Karski and Steve Reich. She has collaborated with the Landjugendorchester NRW, the Pomeranian Philharmonic Orchestra in Bydgoszcz, Poland, and the Torun Symphony Orchestra. Ola Rzepka is a percussionist, pianist, composer, performer. She has performed at most Polish festivals of avant-garde, improvised, contemporary, pop and jazz music. As a composer, she collaborates with renowned theatre directors in Poland, Germany and Switzerland.