With this concert, the Niklas Roever Trio [Niklas Roever (p), Daniel Oetz (b) and Felix Ambach (dr)] impressively underlined their first place in the audience and jury voting of the eastPLUGGED® Junior Award 2018/19. Niklas's numerous original compositions will be remembered not only for their demanding titles ("Anthropomorphism" ...), but above all for their stupendous musicality and sophisticated coordination in the trio, while the soloistic skills of the three Cologne based musicians may be emphasized as well. Finger´s crossed that the victory in the eastPLUGGED® Junior Award will be the start of a successful career!

In the 2nd set Jens Düppe (dr), curator of the eastPLUGGED® Junior Award, performed with Frederic Köster (tr) , Lars Doppler (p)  and Christian Ramond (b). Impressive how the quartet was one hundred percent present from the first note to the end and how its dynamic and brilliant playing reached every corner of the church room. Jens presented the program as the quartet's "best of", and the audience followed this classification by applauding each piece stormily.

As sometimes before at eastPLUGGED®, there was a very special encore ending the evening: "bye bye blackbird" by Ray Henderson, played as a septet with all musicians and double instrumentations on the grand piano, drums and bass, a brilliant finale!

Thank you very much for this great double concert evening with very young and somewhat older jazz musicians.