Just in time for Easter, we’ve received two pieces of wonderful news from the national jazz scene:

Back in late March, bassist Tabea Kind was announced as this year’s recipient of the Baden-Württemberg Jazz Prize. She first performed at the LOFT a little over two years ago, at the awardee concert of saxophonist Sofia Will, who had won the LOFT Young Artists Award recording project in 2023.
After that, Tabea was a guest here of pianist Pablo Held, who presented her in his meets series; in 2024, she herself won our recording project (in a duo with guitarist Paul Walke), and the resulting album Wellen im Bauch was released in March 2025 on stssts records.
Cologne is now the center of Tabea’s life, and on Saturday, May 16th, she will perform at the LOFT again, this time in an improvisational trio with saxophonist Luise Volkmann and pianist Julius Windisch.

And more good news from the Southwest: pianist Olga Reznichenko has been awarded the 2026 SWR Jazz Prize. She gave her first concert at the LOFT more than nine years ago, performing in a duo with singer Sophia Bicking. During the winter of 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Olga recorded her first trio album as bandleader at the LOFT, which was released by Traumton in 2022. Olga has been a guest at the LOFT many times since then—including for Pablo’s meets series—and we are already very much looking forward to her next concert.

Our warmest congratulations to both award winners!