XJAZZ! Budapest

​Berlin's most adventurous jazz festival visits Budapest Music Center's Opus Jazz Club on March 23-24

Since 2014, XJAZZ! has meant up to 80 concerts in less than a week each year in Berlin. Thousands of visitors – almost 20.000 in 2019 – have surged into selected venues in Kreuzberg, such as SO36, Lido or Festsaal Kreuzberg.

The shows are always closely packed – even those of established musicians who usually don’t want to be associated with popping corks, free seating, dim lighting and an audience sweaty from lots of dancing. XJAZZ! has always known how to break with clichés and apparent contradictions.

On the one hand, it’s the choice of venues where people usually go to enjoy pop and electronic music, on the other hand it’s the conscious booking of just such musicians and bands who know the history of jazz, but, at the same time, are free and brave enough to develop their own musical expressions outside of historically imprinted attributions.

This year, Budapest Music Center is proud to present XJAZZ! Budapest in Opus Jazz Club, with two concert evenings giving you a taste of XJAZZ! vibes.

March 23 Wednesday 20:00
MILAD KHAWAM

The musical world of the Syrian trumpet-producer-composer Milad Khawam, who lives in Berlin, was created as a fusion of Middle Eastern traditions and modern electronic music. In his works, the exoticism of the non-tempered scales, which is also characteristic of Arabic music, and the ecstasy encoded in Sufi music meet the pulsation of Berlin, one of the most colorful European metropolises, also considered the capital of electronic music. Milad Khawam hails from Damascus, where he studied classical and Arabic music. His debut album, To The West, was released in 2020 at XJAZZ Music Berlin.

Speaking of the mental thoughts and psychological states that struck him during the road between East and West and was a source of inspiration and basis in the birth of the musical idea of the album. He wanted to document these cases as a musical form in a positive & ironic way, as it means to him personally and could mean to many people who crossed that path at that time and to the present day. Khawam also produces electronic music and can often be found performing solo, combining classical and electronic music for an unconventional approach to the trumpet. More info & tickets

March 24 Thursday 20:00
BOBBY RAUSCH

Inspired by digital and analog, jazz and hip hop, composition and improvisation Bobby Rausch is the sound of young Berlin. Their concerts lead audiences through deep bass valleys, through pulsing groovescapes and the urban night. Drawing influences from electronic beats and rockvinyls alike, Bobby Rausch plays the soundtrack for those tired of compromise. Handmade in Berlin!

With bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, drums and a box full of effects, Lutz Streun, Oleg Hollmann and Jürgen Meyer generate the sizzling club atmosphere of the capital. And on that subject, the 'Rausch' (intoxication/rapture) in the band name wasn’t chosen at random – the bass-dominated Afro-jazz-rock grooves are designed to put the audience into a trance. Technoid bass valleys, free-jazz brass peaks, stony prog-rock paths – concertgoers become mountaineers who can at times make their way along the addictive sounds, but are pushed at other times to conquer them. That’s how interaction is done these days! More info & tickets

Bobby Rausch band photo by Lena Giovanazzi