ILK × CJW Day 1: Lotte Anker Quartet, Wikström/Engel/Helm/Arends

ILK is the name of a collective from the Danish capital Copenhagen, run by 21 musicians primarily as a record label to release their own releases of a hybrid musical avant-garde. In addition, this collective curates one of the stages at the renowned Copenhagen Jazz Festival and organizes concert series in some of Copenhagen’s hottest clubs and venues. At Cologne Jazzweek, some of the Danish collectivists meet like-minded people from Berlin and Cologne. For several years now, there has been a Cologne-Copenhagen connection called Fosterchild, a rotating band led by Danish pianist Jakob Anderskov with contemporary jazz music that sounds large-scale and lucid at the same time. An institution in the European free jazz scene is the Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker, who will be heard twice: once in a trio with the Cologne-based Belgian pianist Marlies Debacker and the Cologne-based Etienne Nillesen on the “extended snare drum” and with an unaccompanied saxophone solo program. There will also be concerts with a German-Danish trio with Berlin-based saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, Cologne-based pianist Philipp Zoubek and Copenhagen-based drummer Peter Bruun, a quartet with Mark Solberg (guitar), Francesco Bigoni (electronics), Almut Kühne (vocals) and Axel Dörner (trumpet), and a duo with saxophonist Jonas Engel and Copenhagen-based Swedish singer Qarin Wikström.