FUNDAMENTAL INTERACTIONS
Tourperiod: 17.10.-26.10.2025
Jelena Kuljic -voc. el
Olga Reznichenko -keys
Kalle Kalima – git
Tim Dahl – bs
Christian Lillinger -dr
„Fundamental Interactions“ is a collaborative project by musician and performer Jelena Kuljić, in which she brings together an international cast with poets from the former Yugoslavia. In addition to her lyrics, she also uses the poems of Marko Pogačar and Olja Savičević Jovančević from Croatia, Selma Asotić and Jasna Šamić from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Dragana Mladenović from Serbia. The focus is on the things that connect us and make us similar, the tension between the concept of home, language and identity. Together with Olga Reznichenko (keyboard), Christian Lillinger (drums), Kalle Kalima (guitar) and Tim Dahl (bass), an extraordinary music project has been created that questions boundaries both geographically and musically. Improvisation, contemporary electronic music, jazz, progressive rock, poetry and avant-garde are combined in this unique project.
The album will be released in 2025, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia.
Jelena Kuljić (Munich, Berlin)- voice, electronics, lyricist
Jelena Kuljić, born in Serbia in 1976, completed her studies in jazz singing at the Jazz Institute Berlin in 2008. She played in numerous theater productions, including at the Volksbühne Berlin, Schaubühne Berlin, Burgtheater Vienna, Thalia Theater, and worked closely with the director David Marton, the choreographer Constanza Macras and the Marc Sinan Company. Jelena Kuljić has been a permanent member of the Münchner Kammerspiele ensemble since the 2015/16 season. As a musician, she plays in various music projects, including KUU! (ACTmusic), Z-Country Paradise (Z-Paradise Records), Fasil (ECM), Wallungen, and performs at international jazz festivals such as the Moers Festival, Elbjazz, Copenhagen Jazzfestival, Natjazz Bergen etc. Your band KUU! was nominated for the German Jazz Prize 2021. In 2022, Kuljić was nominated for the German Jazz Prize as “Vocalist of the Year” and became a winner of the JTl Award.
Kalle Kalima (Berlin) – guitar, composition
Born in Helsinki in 1973. At the moment Kalima performs regularly with his current groups Tenors of Kalima (with Jimi Tenor) and KUU! (with Christian Lillinger, Frank Möbus and Jelena Kuljić). The album Flying like Eagles with guitarist Knut Reiersrud was released by Act Music in August 2019. The album High Noon with bassist Greg Cohen and drummer Max Andrzejewski was released in January 2016 by Act Music. He is a member of A Novel of Anomaly around the singer Andreas Schaerer. With Andreas Schaerer and Tim Lefebvre they are releasing a trio album in 2023. He is a sought-after sideman and has performed with, among others, Ensemble resonance, NDR Big Band as well as with Jason Moran, Jim Black, Anthony Braxton, Leo “Wadada” Smith, Peter Brötzmann, Tony Allen, Luciano Biondini, Jazzanova and Tomasz Stanko. Kalle composed the musical theater piece Dido and Aeneas remembered for Opera Lyon and the Ruhrtriennale. He taught at the music academies in Weimar, Helsinki and Berlin. Since September 2017, Kalle has been a lecturer in jazz guitar at the University of Lucerne. Kalima was nominated for the Jazz Echo Prize in 2016 and the German Jazz Prize in the jazz guitar category in 2022.
Christian Lillinger (Berlin) – drums, electronics, composition
“A completely new type of jazz drummer.” (Der Spiegel). Artist of the Year at the German Jazz Prize. SWR Jazz Prize, German Record Critics‘ Prize. Like Lillinger, nobody plays drums. With outstanding technique, he combines polyrhythmic, multi-dimensional structures and his very own understanding of timing and meter into an inimitable whole. But Christian Lillinger is about more: unconditional, true self-expression. As an instrumentalist, composer, producer and founder of his own label PLAIST, he always strives to create something new – “hyperrealistic, genre-free music,” as he calls it himself. His cosmos ranges from the avant-garde ensemble Dell / Lillinger / Westergaard and the celebrated piano trio Punkt.Vrt.Plastik to the duo Tirap together with electronic artist Johannes Brecht, to the internationally top-class nonet “Open Form For Society”.
“A drummer of remarkable skill and vision.” (Downbeat)
“The man who takes drumming to a higher level.” (Die Zeit)
Olga Reznichenko (Leipzig) – rhodes, synthesizer
Olga was born in 1989 in Taganrog, Russia, where she began her musical training as a classical pianist at the age of eight. In 2012, Olga Reznichenko followed fellow student and jazz saxophonist Evgeny Ring to the “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” University of Music and Theater in Leipzig. Reznichenko studies with Professors Richie Beirach and Michael Wollny and decides to stay in Leipzig for the Master of Music after successfully completing his Bachelor of Music. In 2014, Reznichenko’s quintet “Ylativ Algo” won the GETXO jazz competition in Spain. She founded the band Sophia & Olga with the jazz singer Sophia Bicking. In 2017 the duo won second place at the Sparda Jazz Awards at the Jazz Rally Düsseldorf. In 2022, their trio’s debut album will be released on the renowned Traumton label. The album made it into the 10 best jazz albums of 2022, curated by BR-Klassik, and into the top 8 jazz albums of 2022 from WDR. In 2023, the trio was nominated for the German Jazz Prize in the “Band of the Year” category. In June 2023, Reznichenko received the “Jutta Hipp Prize” in the “Improvisation” category.
Tim Dahl (NYC) – bass, electronics
Tim Dahl, born in 1975, is a professional electric and double bassist, singer, keyboardist and composer who has lived in New York City since 1998. He graduated from the University Massachusetts Amherst. It’s hard to summarize Tim Dahl’s music, but an apt description can be found in the name of one of his many bands: Pulverize the Sound. Through his work in Solo, Flying Luttenbachers, Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus, and more, Dahl enjoys attacking his bass and destroying it, hacking noises out of it like a butcher cutting meat. Tim has performed with many notable musicians, composers and performers including Yusef Lateef, Archie Shepp, Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Tatsuya Yoshida, Von Freeman, Stanley Jordan, Mary Halvorson, Malcolm Mooney, Marc Ribot, Brian Chase, Hamid Drake, Elliot Sharp, etc. Tim currently lives in Brooklyn and is an active member and driving force of the experimental music scene there.
KUU!
KUU! ©Gregor Hohenberg
Tourperiod spring 2026, festivals on request
Jelena Kuljic -voc
Kalle Kalima-git, bs
Frank Möbus -git
Christian Lillinger-dr
Jelena Kuljić,met Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima while rehearsing for a theater production. During breaks, the two started to experiment with everything from new music, rock and jazz – and discovered that the proverbial chemistry between them was right on point. This duo, which came about by chance, would soon be known as KUU! get a broader framework: Kuljić and Kalima brought in aesthetically appropriate partners with guitarist Frank Möbus and drummer Christian Lillinger, who are actually able to span a wide stylistic range with them on an instant base. Now KUU! became a band organized as a collective and stylistically ecclectic, which took up controversial, political topics in their lyrics without shyness and processed them in an ambience that is sometimes loudly rocking, sometimes harshly grooving and also tonally varied.
An exciting and rocking band to watch out for!
Quotes:
Rolling Stone: „Eine explosive Powerpackung. Ungestüm, überraschend und haltlos energieverschwendend. ****“
rbb radio eins: „Vier extrem starke Charaktere treiben sich an ihre Grenzen – und darüber hinaus.“
Jazzthetik: „Clever verschachtelte, dabei aber immer songorientierte und hochenergetische Musik.“
The Guardian, John Fordham : „KUU! grippingly churn through fast improv, snarlingly punky vocals, Arcade Fire and Beastie Boys covers, and intimately ghostly ballads.“
London Jazz News: „This is an astonishing band. Far from any of the established norms, KUU! show the great things which can come to pass when both the indie sound and the indie attitude grow up.“
Süddeutsche Zeitung: „Bei KUU! geht es um etwas. Um unser Leben, unsere Welt, unsere Gesellschaft, jetzt, dringlich, daran lässt die Musik keinen Zweifel.“
3sat Kulturzeit: „Ungestüm und hochpolitisch, irgendwo zwischen Punk, Jazz und Postrock sprengen KUU! mit sperrigen Sounds musikalische Grenzen.“
Bios:
Jelena Kuljić
Kalle Kalima
Christian Lillinger
Frank Möbus
Frank Möbus is one of the founders of Der Rote Bereich (ACT, Intakt) and is a member of Carlos Bica Azul (Enja, Clean Feed), Erdmann/Rohrer 4tett (Intakt), Raw Vision (Unit Records) and Wiesendanger/Möbus/Hemingway. He has worked with Ray Anderson, Kenny Wheeler, Louis Sclavis, Mark Helias, Chris Speed, Han Bennink, John Davis, Kevin Coyne, etc. Since 2006 he has been working as a producer for several artists.