2020 seems to be a much calmer year with less travelling and not that many concerts, but that does not mean it will be less exciting. The best news was that our project ‘Scarecrow’ with my wife Tuçe Erel was funded by the Intercultural Fund of the Berlin Senate. We will present it in Berlin in September 2020. More news on this soon.

I started the year with a lovely concert of our duo Serene with pianist, composer and singer Laia Genc at the amazing Stadtgarten in Cologne. I followed that with a one-week rehearsal period with another pianist, Ingrid Schmoliner, in Vienna. We are working on a new project that will involve strange beats, sounds and Ingrid’s mind-boggling prepared piano playing. That week in Vienna ended with a beautiful, fun improvised concert with Ingrid, Maja Osojnik (voice, electronics) and Martin Brandlmayr at Echoraum. Right after the adventures in Cologne and Vienna, I played two nights of Sun Ra’s music with Simon Sieger and Klub Demboh at Au Topsi Pohl in Berlin.

I will start a four-day workshop on “how to sing a city” with youngsters in Cologne’s Porz area on January 20th. We will wander around the neighborhood, find locations with interesting memories and sounds, record them, try to convert some of these recordings into graphical notation and then sing them. This is similar to the contribution I made to Maxime Hourani’s work “Book of Songs and Places” at the Istanbul Biennial in 2013.

On January 26th, I will be performing with a small selection of musicians from Trickster Orchestra and members of Chor zur Welt in Wilhelmsburg. This will be a warm-up towards our bigger concert at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg in May.

Last concert in January will be with the ridiculously absurd Klub Demboh at Petersburg Art Space on January 27th.

On February 12th, I will be improvising with Max Stehle (sax) and Roman Stolyar (piano) at Artist Homes in Berlin. February 17th will be spent with Klub Demboh at Petersburg Art Space.

On February 17th, I’ll be playing some absurd impro with Berlin’s most exciting impro outfit Klub Demboh.

On February 28th, I will be playing solo electronic music as well as an improvised beat-based duo with Joel Köhn at Bunker Ulmenwall in Bielefeld.