Pascal Niggenkemper, an adventurous double bassist who spent a decade experimenting and meeting new people on the New York scene, as well as in Aveyron, where he honed his sense of space and his relationship with time, presents The Ocean Within Us, a project first performed at the Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin festival last June and nurtured by a Franco-German residency in the Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict supported by the SMAC in 2024 and 2025. Blending spoken word, electronic treatments, groove and free improvisation, this group weaves together the rhythmic intelligence of Detroit-born drummer Gerald Cleaver, who has been nourished by jazz and techno, the masked textures of Berlin keyboardist Liz Kosack and the saxophonistic spirals of Sakina Abdou, not forgetting the double bass, transformed with the help of accessories by the leader, the true pivot of this grooving machine that is as improbable as it is dizzying.

The Ocean Within Us is a Jazzdor production.

An authentic phenomenon of the tenor saxophone, lyrical, vehement, bubbling with energy, influenced as much by the sonic power of a tradition ranging from Coleman Hawkins to Albert Ayler as by the sensual, popular mellowness of rhythm'n'blues, David Murray sees his music, emblematic of a certain syncretic post-free, as a continual rereading of the heritage of black music. At the head of a brand-new quartet of talented young musicians, including the brilliant Spanish pianist Marta Sanchez, this exceptional stylist, with his fluid, rough phrasing, once again celebrates the vitality and topicality of Great Black Music in a free, generous jazz that is both modernist and powerfully rooted in the blues.

Our Jazzpassage events are Franco-German evenings programmed in partnership with Offenburg's Kulturbüro, with the support of AJC.