This year, two exciting musicians are taking part: Julia Rüffert and Cansu Tanrikulu:

Julia Rüffert

Julia Rüffert is a trombonist, composer and improviser. She studied jazz trombone and pedagogy at the Lucerne School of Music and then moved to the Bern University of the Arts to study composition, where she has lived ever since.

As part of Lisa Hoppe’s YSOP and Lukas Briner’s Hyla Crucifer, as well as in her own trio Kokon, she moves at the interface between humor and bitter seriousness, between tonal and free improvisation, and between influences from pop and new music. With YSOP, she won the BeJazz Transnational Promotion Prize in 2021 and was nominated for the German Jazz Award in 2024.

As a composer, she often works with patterns and textures and is interested in unusual instrumentation. In 2013, she received the Downbeat Student Music Award for a big band arrangement.

She was very pleased to be asked to guest curate, even though it’s not easy to turn down bands or musicians: “We could fill three jazz workshops with good music! It’s quite hard to sort through it all.” At the same time, she appreciates working as a team with Cansu, Marc and Bene: “There were surprisingly few heated discussions. We quickly came to a common denominator.”

Cansu Tanrikulu

Cansu Tanrikulu grew up in Ankara (Turkey) and studied music and psychology in Berlin, Ankara and San Diego (USA). She has won numerous prizes, including the 2024 SWR Jazz Prize. As a singer, she is known for her flexible, elastic, expressive vocals and her broad stylistic vocabulary.

She tours throughout Europe with projects such as MeoW, with whom she is on stage at the Jazzwerkstatt – usually she not only appears as a singer, but also plays guitar and synthesizer. Since 2023 she has been teaching at the Bern University of the Arts. As a guest curator, she brought several bands and projects into play, including the punk band Emaskülatör, which, like her, comes from Ankara. “The fact that they are coming to the Jazzwerkstatt makes the teenage Cansu in me so happy!” she says. She is equally pleased that many of the musicians are staying longer than just for their concerts. ‘I think that’s essential,’ she says. ”Music is a social activity – we need to exchange ideas and learn from each other. Otherwise, we just sit in our rehearsal rooms.”