Jazzfest Berlin 2026: Matthias Muche BONECRUSHER

Densities – 12 trombones and percussion

Matthias Muche BONECRUSHER – Schwarz-weiß-Aufnahme einer Gruppe von Musiker*innen, die Blasinstrumente spielen.

Matthias Muche BONECRUSHER: Densities – 12 trombones and percussion 

(DE, JP, NL)

Led by Cologne’s Matthias Muche, a musician who moves easily between contemporary composition and free improvisation, BONECRUSHER is an extraordinary orchestra focused on a single instrument, the typically ebullient, brash and loud trombone. But under Muche’s leadership the group creates a wide array of unexpected sounds and approaches, eschewing any concrete references to military bands or New Orleans funeral parade traditions. As the bandleader describes it, the music explores “the trombone as a large collective instrument, moving between breath, noise, microtonal harmonic fields, dense brass textures and shifting sound masses.”

In its Jazzfest Berlin debut the group will perform music from its stunning 2026 album Densities, filling the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church with full-bodied resonance of a palpably physical nature.  While Muche’s Butter is a dense drone richly marbled by a circular, unceasing churn, his episodic Quarter endlessly radiates new lines, a seemingly infinite flowering of wriggling gestures and shifting harmonies. Berlin trombonist and group member Matthias Müller’s stark Up+Down is a febrile study of microtonal glissandos, massed tones gliding and sliding through subtle pitch shifts. Muche and Müller, along with Chicago trombonist Jeb Bishop, have also transformed Brass / Breath / Brisk, a classic multi-track tape piece by Johannes Bauer, into a densely plotted tangle of sinewy interplay, thick chords and solo digressions. Percussionists Etienne Nillesen and Rie Watanabe add some martial rhythms to this piece while elsewhere their extended techniques add extra resonance and texture to the din. 

Line-up

Matthias Muche – trombone, composition, artistic direction

Matthias Müller – trombone, composition

Adrian Prost – trombone

Carlotta Armbruster – trombone

Anke Lucks – trombone

Maria Trautmann – trombone

Matthias Schuller – trombone

Maximilian Wehner – trombone

Moritz Anthes – trombone

Moritz Wesp – trombone

Yoshiki Matsuura – trombone

Etienne Nillesen – snare drum 

Rie Watanabe – percussion

With the kind support of the Kunststiftung NRW and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia

Next date:

• Date Sunday, 01/November/2026 14:30
• Venue Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche
• Address Breitscheidplatz, 10789 Berlin-Charlottenburg