Music Awards for the Trickster Orchestra

In 2022, the Trickster Orchestra received the German Jazz Award for Best Large Ensemble and the TONALi Award “Courage for Utopia” in contemporary music.

The orchestra was nominated for the German Jazz Award 2022 in two categories, as Best Large Ensemble and for Best Debut Album. Our artistic director Cymin Samawatie was also nominated as Best Female Vocalist. At the award ceremony at the Metropol Theater in Bremen on April 27, 2022, the orchestra then received the award as 2022’s Best Large Ensemble. Since 2021, the German Jazz Award has honored outstanding artistic achievements in the national and international jazz scene in 31 categories. It is realized by the Initiative Musik with funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The jury stated: “They understand music as an expression of a longing, a social utopia of culturally diverse and multi-traditional coexistence. The artistic pathway for this is the fusion of traditional music from Asian, Middle Eastern, and European regions. The orchestra shows different cultural roots and plays on traditional instruments like the sheng, nay, kawala, koto, kanun or oud. The ensemble acts as a transcultural collective and creates a sound language, in which different national and cultural sources merge in equal coexistence. Just like a trickster, a troublemaker who breaks with seemingly established rules and thereby creates something completely new. On a micro-scale, the ensemble becomes a visionary social role model for a seemingly utopian hope for human coexistence on a large scale. For this, the German Jazz Award in the category Large Ensemble of the Year goes to: the Trickster Orchestra.”

On June 11, the orchestra was awarded the TONALi Award “Courage for Utopia” at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. The laudatory speech noted: “The Trickster Orchestra currently demonstrates the possibilities of collective music-making like hardly any other ensemble. In the work of the ensemble, different art music traditions meet at eye level. And from this encounter, a completely new musical language emerges. For us, this is not only gratifying because of the high artistic level – rather, the musicians also depict a utopia of social coexistence that draws its strength from polyphony and multiperspectivity.”

Our artistic director Cymin Samawatie was also honored this year. She received the Berlin Jazz Award at a ceremony and award concert in the Kleiner RBB-Sendesaal in July: “Cymin Samawatie is an outstanding player in Berlin’s music scene, constantly creating new connections with great energy and visionary ideas. As a pianist, singer, composer, and ensemble leader, she unites a wide variety of cultures and languages to create mutually inspiring art forms. Cymin Samawatie has founded several ensembles, in each of which she finds a different form of expression of cultural understanding between jazz, classical, and global music. Cymin Samawatie is an unmistakable voice of artistic freedom.”