Free concerts against a picturesque backdrop

A total of 21 out of 36 concerts are free of charge and can be attended spontaneously. These include concerts right on the beach: the exclusive @the beach series presents special musical moments late at night. Just a few steps further on, the rotunda of the Trinkkurhalle becomes a vibrant jazz café, while the open-air stage adjoins the historic building and offers a platform for regional greats and up-and-coming talent. The beach park, lined with old trees, invites you to linger, while the stylish 73Bar of the Maritim Seehotel is home to the JazzClub.

From warm-up to avslut

With the traditional WarmUp on Thursday, JazzBaltica gets the audience in the mood for an exhilarating festival weekend: At 6 pm, Nils Landgren performs together with the big band of the Ostsee-Gymnasium Timmendorfer Strand on Timmendorfer Platz. Late on Sunday evening, the festival reaches its glittering conclusion with the avslut concert, when Nils Landgren and his musical friends Michael Wollny (piano), Lars Danielsson (bass) and Wolfgang Haffner (drums) set off a rousing jazz firework display. The four high-calibre jazz musicians inspire with an artful interweaving of their own compositions with surprising reinterpretations of great classics - virtuosic, passionate and timelessly elegant.

Concerts @the beach

On Friday at midnight, an incomparable sound cosmos of voice, vibraphone and percussion unfolds on the stage directly on the beach. The Austrian singer Filippa Gojo and the Polish vibraphonist and percussionist Radek Szarek are not only friends, but also musical kindred spirits who understand each other musically. Their own pieces, cleverly interwoven with selected jazz standards and experimental improvisations, create a very intimate dialogue in the concert.

The second Beach concert on Sunday night is characterised by a nuanced balance between jazz, pop and European folk music. Nils Landgren on trombone and vocals, Christopher Dell on vibraphone and Lars Danielsson on bass unite their voices to create a beguiling sound that is both a stream of meditative poetry and a fascinating encounter with three of the most influential jazz musicians of our time.

Concerts at the JazzCafé

At the JazzCafé, bands perform in unusual line-ups or with new and exciting approaches to jazz. Clara Lucas and Hauke Renken will provide an intimate and colourful start to the series on Saturday afternoon. With their debut album "Green", the Cologne-based singer and the Frisian vibraphonist have created a unique cosmos: Jazz and pop classics meet sophisticated original compositions. Lucas' warm, nuanced voice and Renkens' perfectly formed vibraphone playing orbit each other with playful joy and create a gripping atmosphere.

For the Swedish pianist Emil Carlsson Rinstad, Bach's music is "the bible of all music". A point of reference against which everything is measured. In the second JazzCafé concert, he joins Magnus Bergström on double bass and Ola Winkler on drums in a lively dialogue with the Thomaskantor. Baroque lines undergo a careful harmonic refraction, contrapuntal structures are stretched and transferred to improvisation. Breathing freedom emerges from the rigour of the form, in which Bach and jazz intermingle imaginatively.

Whether jazz, classical or pop - Richard Koch has earned himself an excellent reputation as a trumpeter across all genres and has already worked with artists such as Peter Fox, Nils Frahm and Jimi Tenor. With his quintet "Rays of Light", however, the Austrian Berliner-by-choice goes his own way and combines jazz with Balkan sounds, klezmer and Mediterranean folklore. Together with Fabiana Striffler (violin), Valentin Butt (accordion), Andreas Lang (double bass) and Nora Thiele (drums), he unfolds a lively and elegant soundscape in the late afternoon.

Clara Haberkamp is an exceptional artist and former IB.SH JazzAward winner from 2011: pianist, singer and composer all rolled into one. She writes and arranges for a variety of ensembles - from vocal ensemble to piano trio to big band - and yet she always prefers to return to the solo piano. This will also be the case on Saturday evening at the JazzCafé, where she will play her own compositions, which are both immediately moving and surprising with their ingenious originality. With delicate improvisation and a clear voice, she bridges classical and jazz, notation and freedom with virtuosity.

They are among the leading figures in European jazz: the Swedish drummer Carsten Lindholm, the German bassist Eva Kruse and the Swiss pianist Stefan Aeby. Even though each of the three is pursuing different projects and impressing audiences time and again with recordings and concerts ranging from solo to large formations, they still regularly come together to improvise jazz together. This is also the case at the first Sunday concert of the JazzCafé.

In the afternoon, Hamburg trombonist Lisa Stick, winner of the 2012 IB.SH JazzAward, will enter the JazzCafé with her quartet. The ensemble's airy, lyrical sound and virtuosity open up new sonic spaces beyond familiar jazz paths. Between the often still separate worlds of composition and improvisation, the quartet forges an original path on which its very own flow develops - sometimes pulsating, sometimes melodic, always animated by masterful musicality.

The JazzCafé series concludes with a Chet Baker story as it has never been told before. The combination of live music and drama opens up direct and surprising insights into the eventful life of the legendary jazz musician. Sound collages and projections immerse the action on stage in constantly changing moods. The high-calibre cast includes actor Sascha Rotermund, trumpeter Ingolf Burkhardt (NDR Bigband) and singer Ella Burkhardt, winner of the IB.SH JazzAward in 2023, who will present Baker's songs in a new light.

Concerts at the JazzClub

On Friday night, the JazzClub opens its doors for the first time: Swedish trombonist Kristian Persson presents a pulsating universe between jazz, funk and neo-soul with "Nine Sparks Riots" - full of energy, colour and electrifying presence.

The second JazzClub concert brings together four established voices from the German jazz scene: Sven Kerschek (guitar), Gabriel Coburger (saxophone), Lisa Wulff (bass), 2016 IB.SH JazzAward winner, and Valentin Renner (drums). They combine their instruments to create an experimental symbiosis with their own unique sound and improvisational curiosity.

Concerts on the OpenAir stage

The Super RabatzKi Marching Band will open the OpenAir area on Friday and its powerful sound will be like an electric shock to the body. They meet at 2.30 p.m. in front of the pier and then join the audience on a tour of the area around the beach park. Rhythm is not only heard here, but physically felt. It drives, overwhelms and gets under your skin. With drums, saxophones, trumpet and bass, the mini-marching band condenses into a powerful body of sound with an explosive presence. Wherever the band performs, it creates an irresistible energy that inevitably gets your feet moving.

He is a big name in contemporary guitar art in Germany: Arne Lübbert. He combines jazz and blues, South American colourfulness and straight swing to create music that breathes, pulsates and doesn't fit into any pigeonhole. Together with Lars Hansen on bass and Anne Diedrichsen on drums, he takes to the OpenAir stage on Friday evening. With a sure instinct for the "playful in-between", the trio "Lübberty" moves in a shimmering space of motif and improvisation, of structure and freedom, in which the music is not written down, but is created in the moment.

Voice and vibraphone - a dialogue reduced to the essentials. The warm intonation of Ukrainian singer Kateryna Kravchenko floats weightlessly above the gentle vibraphone soundscapes, which Luxembourg's Arthur Clees moulds with great brilliance. The duo breaks with common conventions and allows jazz, classical music, folk songs and electro-acoustic nuances to flow into one another.

It is one of the most tradition-steeped talent forges in the country: The LandesJugendJazzOrchester Schleswig-Holstein has been the first port of call for the best young jazz musicians between the North and Baltic Seas for decades. Under the direction of Lübeck trumpeter and big band leader Michel Schroeder, the young orchestra members create a sound in which wide-ranging melodic arcs meet eruptive brass sections and experimental grooves drive the traditional swing - a sound that combines virtuosity with youthful enthusiasm.

The other top ensemble of young jazz musicians from northern Germany comes from Hamburg. The Hamburg State Youth Jazz Orchestra has been one of the most important select orchestras in Germany for years. Under the direction of the exceptional conductor and trombonist Jörn Marcussen-Wulff, the big band creates a fresh XXL jazz that makes the big band tradition seem very lively and contemporary in all its shades of precision, differentiated sound and bouncy swing.

The last OpenAir concert on Saturday belongs to Hamburg saxophonist Ben Prechtl and his quartet - an ensemble that takes modern jazz further with its own signature style. Their collective sound thrives on alert improvisation and passionate interaction, in which musical ideas intertwine, mirror each other and develop further. With his long-time companions Jacob Eckert (piano), Mario Kolbe (bass) and Johannes Kalt (drums), Prechtl cultivates an interplay of confident familiarity and a curious thirst for discovery.

On Sunday, two northern lights follow in musical dialogue: Saxophonist Stefan Kuchel and pianist Jan-Christoph Mohr are among the established voices of the Schleswig-Holstein jazz scene. In their joint concert, they turn their attention to German folk and children's songs and transform the supposedly familiar into new spheres of sound: Songs such as "Hänsel und Gretel", "Es tanzt ein Bi-Ba-Butzemann" and "O du lieber Augustin" are reimagined by them in unconventional, multi-layered arrangements - rhythmically surprising, acoustically impressive and playfully ironic.

"Four on the Floor" is the jazz term for the driving groove in which the bass drum marks every quarter beat in 4/4 time. This is also the name of a young quartet that moves between jazz and fusion with remarkable energy and stylistic openness. Their repertoire ranges from Chet Baker to Pat Metheny and Bob Reynolds. The musicians got to know each other at the SommerJazz Workshop and in the LandesJugendJazzOrchester Schleswig-Holstein. They won an award at the "Jugend jazzt" competition for this JazzBaltica concert, which concludes the concerts on the OpenAir stage.