Guitar Double-Solo | Christian Verspay & Jo Jena at Loft

tickets:
regular: 12,- €uro
students, disabled persons: 6,- €uro

doors: 8.00 pm CEST
concert starts:
approx. 8.30 pm CEST

Jo Jena dedicates his set to the seven-string solo guitar and presents the acoustic passages of his new album Hydrangea – recorded at the LOFT in November 2022. The programme includes a through-composed suite, arrangements of modal jazz compositions (Wayne Shorter, Kenny Wheeler, Allan Holdsworth) and atonal free funk.

Jo Jena has been concentrating on solo guitar for four years. He has released several recordings during the corona pandemic, including arrangements of Schoenberg piano pieces for electric guitar. Previous musical credits include projects with Rhys Chatham, Ensemble Modern (Nachwuchsforum), Flowarea, Mike Daliot and Bertram Ritter....

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tickets:
regular: 12,- €uro
students, disabled persons: 6,- €uro

doors: 8.00 pm CEST
concert starts:
approx. 8.30 pm CEST

Jo Jena dedicates his set to the seven-string solo guitar and presents the acoustic passages of his new album Hydrangea – recorded at the LOFT in November 2022. The programme includes a through-composed suite, arrangements of modal jazz compositions (Wayne Shorter, Kenny Wheeler, Allan Holdsworth) and atonal free funk.

Jo Jena has been concentrating on solo guitar for four years. He has released several recordings during the corona pandemic, including arrangements of Schoenberg piano pieces for electric guitar. Previous musical credits include projects with Rhys Chatham, Ensemble Modern (Nachwuchsforum), Flowarea, Mike Daliot and Bertram Ritter.

„a truly independent and self-contained musician and guitarist“.
Lothar Trampert

“With this realization and recording, Jo Jena has opened a new window on Schönberg‘s work, lifting it out of the second Viennese School and bringing it into our very timbral 21st century.”
Elliott Sharp- E#, nyc june 2021

„Minimalist, meditative, also harmonically very concentrated, these one to two minute pieces cast a spell over you… And when he strongly alienates his guitar tone, discreetly distorts it, fades it in with the volume control or also incorporates slide and tapping effects, Verspay shows his wide musical spectrum, which will hardly fit into a known style pigeonhole. …Border crossers between the sound worlds of abstract avant-garde and new-instrumental-mainstream…“
JAZZTHETIK Magazine (08/22)

http://christianverspay.com

Christian’s project twentyeightDAYS was created at the beginning of 2021 in the midst of the lockdown and contains 28 compositions by the Cologne guitarist, which were created over the period of 28 consecutive days.
Each piece processes the first intuitive, spontaneous musical motif that emerged on the respective day into a composition. In a second step, an equally spontaneous illustration was created for each recording – the artist Christian Zanotelli also processed his first intuitive idea. The images are projected via a beamer and performed live.

Christian Verspay is an extremely versatile musician on both the electric and the acoustic guitar and likes to go his own way: exciting sound worlds, new and experimental things meet here.
He began with the classical guitar but founded his first band early on. This duality and interest in different musical styles has been a common thread throughout his career so far. This is also reflected in his compositions. In his pieces, he explores boundaries and incorporates a wide variety of elements.
Christian Verspay completed his guitar studies at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and since then concert tours have taken him to Japan, South America and various European countries. He is a welcome guest at festivals and concerts and knows how to inspire internationally with his innovative projects.

„Whoever is looking for an original musician and guitarist – here he is!“
Gitarre & Bass (06/2022)

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