Born in Jaén ( Andalucía / Spain ), Irene Aranda started to play piano at age seven. Classical trained and selftaught in jazz and free improvisation, Aranda is defined by the critics as original, astonishing and free from stereotypes. She has played with Don Malfon, Brandon López, Markus Breuss, Johannes Nästestjö, Samuel Blasser, Germán Díaz, Agustí Fernández, Joanna Mattrey, Lucía Martínez, Javier Carmona, Núria Andorrà, Marc Egea and so on.
“Irene Aranda is a sensitive pianist. Her often prepared piano sparkles with sharp highs. Fine overtones inside, staggered phrasing outside—you discover her and immediately want to learn more.”
Luc Bouquet / Improjazz Magazine
“… the effects Irene creates break through the emptiness and awaken the senses for a truly impressive improvisation in which styles overlap, both hands act independently of each other, intertwine, and technique shines in all its glory … It is amazing how naturally a composition of such density emerges and how melodies arise from it that lead to tempo changes and harmonic developments.”
Carlos Pérez Cruz / El Club de Jazz
“Spanish pianist Irene Aranda … the discovery of the festival.”
Sven Thielmann / WAZ Newspaper, Internationales (Jazz Festival Münster)
Maria I.J. Reich is a violinist, composer, researcher, poet, and educator—a distinctive voice of a new generation of improvisational musicians in Europe. Her work combines virtuosity with compositional depth and interdisciplinary research. After studying at the Berlin University of the Arts, jazz at the renowned Jazz Institute Berlin, and cultural studies with honors, she developed a profile that combines contemporary music, improvisation, and research. She has lived in Mexico, Peru, Italy, France, and Germany, speaks five languages, and moves artistically between genres and disciplines. She has received composition commissions from Ensemble Reflektor and the Goethe-Institut, among others, and numerous grants from the Berlin Senate and Musikfonds, among others. Her solo album INTERDEPENDENZEN (Relative Pitch Records, 2024) and publications with transcript, Routledge, and Verlag Neue Musik Berlin document her independent research and sound language. She is currently working on CARE WORKS—a project about care work in our society.
“She’s not just a highly talented violinist, but also – as some of you surely know – a super-smart mind. I don’t know many people whose knowledge about the essence of improvisation is so wide-ranging and close to life like Maria’s.”
Louis Rastig / A L`ARME! Festival
She is “embracing all sounds, dirty and rough, touching and lyrical, melodic and percussive. Reich sees the beauty in all of them, as well as their insconspicuous and imperceptible interdependence that weaves between all things.”
Eyal Hareuveni / Salt Peanuts
