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Short info
The Monika Roscher Bigband is a wild large ensemble blending math-jazz, avant-pop, prog, and experimental soundscapes.
Led by guitarist and composer Monika Roscher, the band is smashing the boundaries of the traditional big band genre with its extraordinary sound. With explosive brass arrangements, powerful guitar riffs, and playful live electronics, they create a unique sonic experience that turns every performance into an unpredictable adventure of virtuosic joy, symphonic grandeur, and feverish ecstasy.
Their latest album, Witchy Activities And The Maple Death (Zenna Records), received the German Record Critics’ Award and was nominated for the 2024 German Jazz Award as Best Album, while the track 8 Prinzessinnen won the German Jazz Award for Composition of the Year. The German news magazine Der Spiegel wrote in its review: “Their third stunning album is a buzzing, nervous witches’ sabbath charged with feminist superpower. […] A fascinating potion of metal and jazz.”
About the band
Formed in in Munich in 2011 the band soon made waves with their thrilling live performances and the boundary bashing ideas of Monika Roscher, their founder, singer, guitarist and conductor. Their first two albums Failure in Wonderland (2012, Enja / Jazz Echo Newcomer of the Year award) and Of Monsters and Birds (2016, Enja) were met with acclaim in press, radio and TV. The band played at many prestigious Jazzfestivals in Germany (e.g. Jazzfest Berlin, JazzBaltica, Jazzfest Burghausen) as well as at the philharmonic concert halls of Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie), Cologne and Munich. They were invited to rock, dance and art festivals alike (e.g. Zappanale, Fusion Festival, Stroke Art Fair) and also caused a stir abroad, playing in Salzburg, Prague and Istanbul, with the US magazine DownBeat naming them as ‘Rising Stars’.
The band have now been playing together for over a decade. Virtuosos as individuals, they are nevertheless close-knit as a group and feed on the musical challenges set during recording sessions, while each of their rousing live shows is a celebration of the musical freedom and inspiration they offer each other. Their third album Witchy Activities And The Maple Death is stunning proof of how exhilarating and fresh a big band can sound today. Superbly recorded, it achieves a breathtaking balance of intimate fragility and symphonic intensity that lets the full sonic spectrum of a big band scream and shine in every colour imaginable. Roscher’s tension- filled and intricately detailed compositions evoke otherworldly landscapes that at times enchant with their elegiac beauty, but at others wreak havoc like the unleashed frenzy of a witches’ sabbath thick with haze. At the same time the pieces always leave room for spontaneous experiments and improvisation. Lyrically, questions of human-technological interdependence are explored, nocturnal ocean sceneries open up and worlds are reborn. This is the sound of a band that loves the adventure, that is driven by a hunger for musical symbiosis and constantly surprises and reinvents itself.
Released to overwhelming critical acclaim, the album thrilled journalists versed in indie, metal and jazz alike. Some of the biggest German outlets wrote glowing reviews, among them Spiegel, Stern, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine. The album won the German record critics award 2023 and was nominated as Album of the year for the German Jazz Prize 2024. The song 8 Prinzessinnen was awarded the German Jazz Prize 2024 as composition of the year. Roscher founded her own label Zenna Records for the release of the latest album.
Roscher founded her own label Zenna Records for the release of the latest album.
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Musicians
Trumpets
Trombones
Rhythm Section
Crew
Live-Sound
| Matthias Leichtle | |
| Toni Hartmann |
Extended Universe 23
| Victor Alcántara | Klavier |
| Lukas Jochner | Posaune |
| Maxine Troglauer | Posaune |
| Alex Bayer | Bass |
| Jan Landowski | Posaune |
| Frederic Andrej | Posaune |
| Matthias Lindermayr | Trompete |
| Jakob Lakner | Bariton-Sax |
| Tahpir | Electronics |
| Robert Hedemann | Posaune |
| Valentin Preißler | Saxophon |
| Felix Ecke | Trompete |
| Tobias Herzog | Posaune |
| Florian Raepke | Trompete |
Design
| Sascha Banck | Artwork & Paintings |
| Emanuel Klempa | Photographie |
| Tobias Koark-Haberl | Design |
| Lukas Diller | Photographie |
| Julian Gapp | Webdesign & Programmierung |