Live and open air
Jazz festival ‘Nights in Thuringia’ with student combos on Goetheplatz
For the second time, the Department of New Music and Jazz is hosting an open-air festival featuring student combos. ‘Nights in Thuringia 2025’ will once again take place on Saturday, 5 July and Sunday, 6 July, on Weimar's Goetheplatz between the Kasseturm and the youth and cultural centre mon ami. Admission to all live performances by the student ensembles is free.
The festival kicks off on Saturday, 5 July at 5:30 p.m. with the ‘Kenny Wheeler Ensemble’. This combo brings to life the rich sound and emotional depth of the music of Canadian-British trumpeter and composer Kenny Wheeler, whose music still sounds as fresh and lively today as it did 50 years ago.
The programme continues at 6:30 p.m. with ‘Parhelia’, which searches for new sounds with piano, voice, interaction and improvisation.
At 7 p.m., the ‘Charles Mingus Ensemble’ will take to the stage, having spent the summer semester working on meditative to ecstatic compositions. The audience will be transported back to 1964, when Charles Mingus toured Europe with his band.
After the ‘Basic Ensemble’ at 8 p.m., ‘Doro Et Entourage’ will take to the stage at 9 p.m. with plenty of soul and a smoky voice to round off the evening with dreamy melodies and hip-hop-heavy beats.
The Sunday sessions on 6 July will kick off at 5 p.m. with the ‘Harmonic Progression Ensemble’. The ensemble will present its own compositions, which will first be described without technical terms and presented gesturally before their chord structure is put into practice.
The programme continues at 6 p.m. with the group ‘The New Standard’, which is dedicated to the music of Herbie Hancock, who opened up the supposedly dusty repertoire of the jazz world to pop.
At 7 p.m., the ‘Stage Ensemble’ will present characteristic and colourful pieces ranging from jazz classics to original compositions with two singers and a combo. The ‘Electro Ensemble’ will then take to the stage at 8 p.m. with a symbiosis of jazz and electricity.
You can experience well-known jazz standards in a modern guise, inspired by artists such as Chaka Khan and Terence Blanchard, where danceable grooves meet technical finesse. The ‘Nights in Thuringia 2025’ will conclude with a jam session at 9 p.m.
[20 June 2025]