DUO ZAKIA MOUNIRA / MATHIS NICOLAUS

Zakia Mounira and Mathis Nicolaus are also dedicating their current program to music from all over the world in addition to the Great American Songbook: France, Brazil, Palestine, ...

In doing so, they often use the song structures as a basis for freer passages and enter unheard paths. Each concert is a dive through diverse cultures, held together by the love of jazz and the improvisation of the two musicians:innen.

With the help of music, singer Zakia Mounira searches for a connection between culture and soil, identity and border. After studying opera singing in her native France and her studies in jazz in Dresden, she now visits us from Canada, her mother’s country of birth, with a programme that offers some surprises, between jazz and intimate Franco-Canadian folklore.

Mathis Nicolaus is a Dresden composer and pianist. He studied at the College of Music "Carl Maria von Weber". Concert tours with his bands "Das besser Leben", "Richard Ebert Quartett", "Caldera" and "Das Telefonchat" took him to other European countries in addition to many guest venues in Germany. Together with Sebastian Studnitzky, Nicolaus developed the musical design of the Stendaler Lichttage in 2015.

In January 2017 he won with the band "Das besser Leben" for the interpretation of his pieces the chamber music award of the Society of Friends, Sponsors and Alumni of the HfM Dresden. In the same year, he also caused a stir with his big band project, with which he guested in local concert clubs. Mathis Nicolaus has appeared as a composer for the hfmdd jazz orchestra, the Mittelsächsische Philharmonie and the wind quintet HORN5. Since 2018 he has been leading the big band of TU Dresden and is host of the “Dresden Jazz Session” at Club Blue Note Dresden.

During the time of the Corona Lockdown, Nicolaus and his trio "The Late Knights" designed a large part of the musical accompaniment of the late-night show streamed every evening from the Blue Note Dresden with artists and creatives from all over Dresden.