Kalia Vandever at LOFT in Cologne

Kalia Vandever, Simon Jermyn, Florian Herzog, Jonas Burgwinkel
LOFT
Cologne Jazzweek
Cologne, Germany
September 8, 2026

Loft is stashed away in an unassuming side-street courtyard. It offers seats for around 100 visitors, who must first prove their fortitude by tramping up five flights of narrow stairs. After attaining the summit on September 8, they met a sharp tang of cleaning products and a small performance space with a baby grand piano tucked behind it. So why such rigorous hygiene? How had that piano navigated the steps? And what could listeners expect from this latest instalment in the CGNYC concert series?

The audience only got an answer to the last question: Cologne Meets New York City is a sequence of concerts that brings together artists from two urban centers that are more than 7,500 kilometers apart. The project was created by bassist Florian Herzog . For tonight's show, he teamed up with guitarist Simon Jermyn and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel. They explored original compositions by trombonist Kalia Vandever, who had jetted over from the Big Apple for Cologne Jazzweek.

A high-energy opening number kicked off the one-hour concert. As the other musicians hunched close to their instruments, Vandever struck a relaxed attitude. The Brooklyn-based trombonist addressed the horn with eyes closed and shoulders low. Their tone often leaned on a baggy vibrato, while Vandever's patient approach to phrasing seemed to wait for ideas or motifs to climb the stairs and meet at the mouthpiece.

The next two tunes both began with neatly drawn arpeggio shapes delivered via Jermyn's powder-pink guitar. He added a spidery-fingered solo with a far-off tone for the more introspective piece. The group followed this with a looping composition that evoked a softer, more vulnerable mood. Vandever's single-note pulse bracketed long passages of improvisation over the stuck-in-place harmony. Herzog's judicious solo marked a stand-out moment.

By contrast, the group carried their listeners on a wide-roaming journey for "In My Dream House." Like most of the night's material, it first appeared on Vandever's 2025 album Another View (Northern Spy). Jermyn adopted a wobblier guitar tone and the trombone voice carried a more fragile quality in the introductory section. The music darkened from minute to minute with Burgwinkel thwacking the drums above crunchier, more urgent contributions from the two string instruments.

The full-house crowd got an opportunity for quiet reflection as it filed down LOFT's many stairs and into its secluded courtyard. This was an unfurling concert that began laser-focused but added layers of meaning with each song and segment. Vandever's compositions posed ever more difficult questions while exposing dense veins of warmth, sorrow and doubt. They are a deep-thinking musician with a powerful gift for engaging the listener—long after the venue has emptied and the audience has returned to the fresh air outside.