International, poetic & powerful - the concerts on the MainStage

From 25 to 28 June 2026, Timmendorfer Strand will once again become a vibrant stage for contemporary jazz. With 36 concerts around the Strandpark, the festival opens doors to new worlds of sound.

JazzBaltica presents current voices and fresh jazz impulses. For example, Swedish percussionist Emil Brandqvist, American singer Michael Mayo, who will be performing as a soloist alongside the Norrbotten Big Band, American fusion keyboardist Bobby Sparks II and his band, Finnish jazz guitarist Kalle Kalima and South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini will be performing at JazzBaltica for the first time on the MainStage.

This year, the vibraphone scene has a special focus. Christopher Dell, Radek Szarek, Hauke Renken and Arthur Clees bring exciting programmes to the stage and allow the fascinating sophistication of this instrument to shine through in its floating timbres, rhythmic sounds and harmonic grooves.

There will also be a reunion with familiar festival companions: Omar Sosa, Joo Kraus and Diego Piñera, David Helbock, China Moses, Clara Haberkamp, the NDR Bigband and many others will be returning to Timmendorfer Strand to pick up on musical stories that have found their artistic home here.

A special highlight this year is once again the family concert: "Mischief with Michel from Lönneberga" combines the JazzBaltica Ensemble with the storytelling art of the great actor Gustav Peter Wöhler and invites both older and younger listeners to a shared experience.

The concerts on the MainStage

At the special concert on Thursday evening, Ivan Lins, the icon of Música Popular Brasileira from Rio de Janeiro, celebrates a unique JazzBaltica concert. Together with the renowned American vocal ensemble New York Voices and the famous Danish Radio Big Band under the direction of master arranger Ralf Schmid, he will present the full power of his music: a sensual synthesis of samba, bossa nova, Brazilian pop and jazz - rich in sound, infused with seductive melancholy and carried by an energetic zest for life. (JB S)

The Emil Brandqvist Trio will open the regular programme on the MainStage on Friday. It elegantly turns the hierarchies of the classical piano trio on its head. Here it is not the pianist who leads, but the drummer. From the drumset, Brandqvist sets the pace with subtle authority and provides impulses that open up new sonic spaces. What has emerged over seven albums between him, bassist Max Thornberg and pianist Tuomas A. Turunen resembles a musical telepathy. Their compositions oscillate between melancholic poetry and powerful condensation - timeless music that defies the fleeting zeitgeist. (JB 1)

Afterwards, an extraordinary vocal talent celebrates his premiere on Timmendorfer Strand: Michael Mayo, whose voice oscillates with playful elegance between scat, beatbox and lyrical singing, as if the boundaries between these worlds did not exist. The 33-year-old American, a student of masters such as Herbie Hancock and Dianne Reeves, has developed a musical language that defies categorisation. In his vocal cascades between jazz, pop and soul, he is accompanied by the Swedish Norrbotten Big Band, one of the most innovative ensembles in Europe. (JB 1)

Friday ends with a performance by keyboardist Bobby Sparks II, who blends genres in his music with a casual naturalness, as if it were the most natural process in the world. What he elicits from his keyboard instrument defies any acoustic categorisation: sometimes you hear a saxophone, sometimes an electric guitar and then a trumpet. However, Sparks actually uses a clavinet, a keyboard that is almost extinct today, with which he can produce the boldest tone modulations. On his latest album "Paranoia", the Texan musician combines influences from jazz, hip-hop, funk and rock to create a unique contemporary sound. (JB 2)

Saturday begins on the MainStage with the Britta Virves Trio. The Estonian pianist and composer, a long-time resident of Stockholm, is an up-and-coming star of the European jazz scene. Together with Jon Henriksson on bass and Jonas Bäckman on drums, she creates an intimate Baltic-Scandinavian sound fusion in which Nordic vastness, Estonian inwardness and sensual sounds of nature unite to form a quiet, atmospheric jazz meditation. (JB 3)

KMK - three initial letters that may initially evoke other associations, but this trio formed in Berlin really has nothing in common with the Kultusministerkonferenz: the Finn Kalle Kalima on electric guitar, the Bosniak Mirna Bogdanovic with her voice and the German Keisuke Matsuno, also on electric guitar, have come together to form a formation that daringly subverts the classic trio format. As Delay Lake, the three develop a filigree web of sound threads in which the boundaries between accompaniment and leadership, between harmony and dissonance dissolve - a trio that shows how contemporary jazz can sound. (JB 3)

The term "supergroup" should be used sparingly. But when these musicians come together, the superlative comes to mind: Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Trygve Seim (saxophone), Anders Jormin (bass) and Markku Ounaskari (drums) have long been among the most important jazz musicians of our time. All four stand for an aesthetic "that is more about the music and less about demonstrating skill", as Seim succinctly puts it. With their project "Arcanum", the Finnish-Swedish-Norwegian formation develops a trend-setting musical language in which avant-garde experiments are grounded in a Nordic way. (JB 4)

Peter Gall is one of the most distinguished German drummers, but he is also a composer and bandleader whose vision extends far beyond the drum. On his latest album "Love Avatar", he presents compact, atmospheric sound collages that search for something new in music. He is joined by Wanja Slavin (saxophone), Carl Morgan (guitar), Rainer Böhm (piano) and Matthias Pichler (bass) - all of them top European jazz musicians. The perfectly coordinated formation unfolds a futuristic mosaic of jazz, fusion and hypnotising grooves. (JB 4)

Alma Naidu is regarded as a great discovery in German jazz singing. The young Munich native, who has increasingly moved into the limelight in recent years, impresses not only with her voice, but also as an accomplished composer. Her pieces have a precisely calibrated dramaturgy in which wide-ranging melodic arcs meet precisely accentuated rhythms. Naidu's songwriting, imbued with a sure instinct for arrangements, moves confidently between powerfully condensed poetry and soulful cantilenas. (JB 5)

It is a jazz friendship of great endurance: the German trumpeter Joo Kraus, the Uruguayan drummer Diego Piñera and the Cuban pianist Omar Sosa have shared a musical affinity for many years, which they are constantly testing out in new constellations. In the trio "Vibe Factor", they combine their experiences to create a furiously multi-layered sound - sometimes spherical and iridescent, sometimes eruptive and always carried by electrifying tension. The three award-winning musicians combine contemporary beats with South American polyrhythms and create a lively interplay of tradition and modernity. (JB 5)

The family concert opens the MainStage on Sunday: Little Michel lives with his parents, his sister Little Ida, the maid Lina and the farmhand Alfred on a farm in Lönneberga in Småland. With his inexhaustible ideas, he gets from one adventure to the next: sometimes he lets Little Ida grow up into the sky on the flagpole, sometimes his head gets trapped in a bowl of soup or he locks his father in the toilet cubicle, always to the gleeful amazement of those around him. In this family concert, Nils Landgren, Lisa Stick, Izumi Ster, Annette Saxe and Eva Klesse, together with the actor Gustav Peter Wöhler as narrator, revive the cheerful stories surrounding this unforgettable Astrid Lindgren character in dazzling worlds of sound and storytelling. (JB kids)

Sunday lunchtime will see a concert by the NDR Big Band under the direction of its chief conductor Nikki Iles. With her programme "The Shadow of a Dream", Iles unfolds a musical reflection on our present. "I focused on themes of unity - how important it is to maintain empathy and find common ground despite the challenges we face. Making music together gives me hope for our common humanity and reminds me that we shouldn't be afraid to dream," she explains. Every note, every orchestral twist here acts like a small ray of light that builds bridges and celebrates music as a unifying force. (JB 6)

Pianist David Helbock is a figurehead of Austrian jazz. With his virtuosity and unbridled creativity, he inspires audiences on all continents. For his current project, Helbock was able to win the versatile bassist and cellist Julia Hofer from Vienna as a duo partner. Hofer, previously known primarily in the world of pop music, shows her skills here in a completely new context. Their music together thrives on contrasts: groove and silence, experiment and catchiness, improvisation and intuition flow into one another and oscillate brilliantly between jazz, pop and classical music. (JB 7)

The South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini is one of the most original voices on the contemporary jazz scene. His spirited playing blends jazz, ritual African music and gospel into a dynamic synthesis in the tradition of South African legends such as Bheki Mseleku, Moses Molelekwa and Abdullah Ibrahim. In his playing, Makhathini translates the click sounds of the Zulu language into a universal musical vocabulary and at the same time incorporates impulses from the spiritually charged sound world of John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner. The result is haunting music that is enveloped in a spiritual aura. (JB 7)

At the end of the MainStage concerts, Nils Landgren (trombone/vocals), Michael Wollny (piano), Lars Danielsson (bass/cello) and Wolfgang Haffner (drums) meet the Swedish multi-instrumentalist Magnus Lindgren, the American jazz singer China Moses and a brass section. The result is a multi-layered sound event consisting of soulful original compositions, captivating instrumental solos and vocal acrobatics, in which improvisational freedom and orchestral precision intertwine - a finale full of artistry and stylistic breadth. (JB 8)