Jazzfest Berlin 2026: EROSÃO PERCUSSION TRIO // DREAM BABY DREAM // Anthony Braxton Septet // Alexander Hawkins Willow Music

Alexander Hawkins, Anthony Braxton, EROSÃO PERCUSSION TRIO – Collage aus Portrait eines Mannes, älterer Mann mit Saxophon und Gruppe von drei Personen im Wald.

18:00

EROSÃO PERCUSSION TRIO

(BR, DE, MX)

Drummer, composer and singer Mariá Portugal has been a regular presence at Jazzfest Berlin in recent years thanks in part to her remarkable versatility and range. She possesses many sides, whether performing with her Brazilian collective Quartabê or improvising with Fred Frith and Susanna Santos Silva. Portugal has an innate ability to find a lyric quality within the most elliptical of gestures, conjuring beautiful melodies in the midst of multi-linear abstraction. In 2021, she presented a European iteration of her EROSÃO project at Jazzfest Berlin, interpreting songs made with Brazilian collaborators with spontaneous arrangements.  

She had planned to do something similar when she formed EROSÃO PERCUSSION TRIO a few years ago with fellow percussionists Emilio Gordoa and Burkhard Beins, both of whom are important figures in Berlin’s so-called Echtzeitmusik scene, which often embraces a stripped-down, minimalist approach to improvisation. Over time, though, the trio’s focus shifted, producing an exquisite middle ground, with an all new repertoire. Sometimes Portugal sings her own melodies with riveting tenderness over hovering swells of a single tone, while elsewhere she fights through clatter. Together the musicians have amassed a vast catalog of rarefied extended techniques, drawing upon them to construct a series of episodes powered by close listening and bursting with detail. 

Line-up

Mariá Portugal – percussion, drums, voice

Emilio Gordoa – percussion, live electronics

Burkhard Beins – percussion, electric bass

Followed by:

DREAM BABY DREAM

A film by Andrés Aguiló, Lina Ashour, Frederik Britzlmair, Nadin Deventer, Joel Grip, Andrés Hilarión, Chris Jonas, Nelly Thea Köster, Cal Ola und Ahmed Shah

A production by Jazzfest Berlin / Berliner Festspiele

2025, 21 min

In various languages with English subtitles 

60 Berlin-based participants, including children, teenagers, adults, professional and non-professional artists from various disciplines, engage with central questions of our present through music, movement and poetry in this experimental short film. The project was developed and produced by a 10-member creative team and was shot during the Jazzfest Community Week in late October 2025 in Berlin. The film premiered in Washington, D.C., in April 2026, where it received the IN Series Counterpoint Award, and has since been screened more than twenty times at music and film festivals in Germany and abroad.

19:45

Anthony Braxton Septet

(BE, CA, DE, FR, US)

World premiere

In 2019 the legendary American composer and reedist Anthony Braxton mounted one of the most unforgettable events in the rich history of Jazzfest Berlin when presented his Sonic Genome at Gropius Bau with more than 60 musicians, a fitting tribute to a figure who has spent his life altering the musical landscape. A founding member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Braxton boldly ignored the notion of genre on his way to laying down foundations for creative methods drawing upon the entirety of human imagination, where experimentation, improvisation, and collectivity have always been privileged above all. The number of musicians that have worked under and studied with Braxton reads like a who’s who in improvised music, including many performers on this year’s programme: George Lewis, Mary Halvorson, Alexander Hawkins, and Tomeka Reid among them.

This special concert introduces a new ensemble, a book of compositions, and a new organisational system. Braxton’s music has always been accretive, adding new concepts and conceptions to work that’s always evolving. Some of these ideas have been explored in his saxophone quartet Lorraine (2022), in which the leader added some electronics to densely woven melodic interplay interpreted through the prismatic perspective of his improvisational “Language Music” (aka “Ghost Trance Music”), but this iteration updates the material with a new level of possibilities, imagined by Braxton as a kind of underground universe. Joining the leader is long-time colleague James Fei, along with two exciting first-time collaborators: Berlin reedist Silke Eberhard, who triumphantly collaborated with another AACM heavy, Henry Threadgill, in 2023, and New York-based Canadian saxophonist Anna Webber, a dazzling composer who played Jazzfest Berlin in 2024 as a member of John Hollenbeck’s GEORGE. The ensemble is rounded out by three tuba players: Berlin resident Matthew Bookert, Belgium’s Berlinde Deman, and France’s Fanny Méteier.

Line-up

Anthony Braxton – saxophone

James Fei – saxophone

Anna Webber – tenor saxophone

Silke Eberhard – alto saxophone

Fanny Méteier – tuba

Berlinde Deman – tuba

Matthew Bookert – tuba

21:15

Alexander Hawkins Willow Music

(DE, GB, IT, US)

European premiere

Willow Music might be a new project from the remarkable British pianist, composer, and bandleader Alexander Hawkins, but it’s actually the product of serious consideration and development. Hawkins, who in recent years has performed at Jazzfest Berlin as a member of the trio Decoy and in a duo with singer Sofia Jernberg, yearned to expand his use of contrapuntal writing, where melody lines play off of one another. He’s explored the practice in his long-running trio, but the pianist longed for some orchestral possibilities that would both increase the opportunities for counterpoint and afford the chance to produce some dense chordal harmonies, picking up on ideas from Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton he greatly admired.

Finally, most of the band members play more than one instrument, exponentially expanding the potential voicings from the band, and allowing Hawkins to indulge in some Ellingtonian arranging. He notes that the single-word titles of each piece are a nod to Duke’s penchant for terse, all-cap titles he sometimes used. For the ensemble’s first performances at London’s Cafe Oto in May, bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis, the rhythm section from his long-running trio, participated in the creation of the music to provide continuity; most of the ensemble consists of musicians Hawkins hadn’t previously worked with. The group he brings to Berlin includes some important figures on the UK scene, including reedists Chelsea Carmichael and Tom Challenger along with Italian reedist Marco Colonna, Berlin-based trombonist Matthias Müller, and bassist Nick Dunston. 

Line-up

Chelsea Carmichael – flute, tenor saxophone

Tom Challenger – flute, clarinet, alto saxophone

Marco Colonna – clarinet

George Crowley – bass clarinet, tenor saxophone

Stephen Davis – drums, percussion

Nick Dunston – double bass

Alicia Gardener-Trejo – flutes, bass clarinet

Alexander Hawkins – piano, composition

Olivia Hughes – tuba

Charlotte Keeffe – trumpet

Matthias Müller – trombone

Runtime: Thu, 29/10/2026 to Sun, 01/11/2026

Next date: EROSÃO // Anthony Braxton Septet

• Date Thursday, 29/October/2026 18:00
• Venue Haus der Berliner Festspiele - Große Bühne
• Address Schaperstraße 24, 10719 Berlin-Wilmersdorf
• Price from €39.84

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