ZZ Quartet

Accompanied by bassist Martin Gjakonovski, a native of Macedonia now living in Bergisch Gladbach near Cologne, and Zjaca’s longtime collaborator, American drummer Adam Nussbaum, whose wealth of credits include touring and recording with saxophonist Brecker, guitarists John Scofield and John Abercrombie, and legendary bandleader Gil Evans, Zjaca and Zanchini present an eclectic set of music that organically blends aspects of jazz, classical, folkloric, world music and rock, with just a touch of humor along the way from the fertile imaginations of these stellar improvisors.
“Simone and I grew up listening to jazz, and jazz is American music,” said Zjaca, a Croatian native and longtime resident of Rotterdam. “But we always want to declare that we come from Europe and that we are, with the exception of Adam, a European band.”
“We call this musical theater,” said Zjaca of the ZZ Quartet’s eclectic approach. “We want to be open for any ideas, any sound. We like rock music, we like jazz, avantgarde music, swing, everything. We don’t want to be in a cage just playing one particular groove or style or sound. You can hear that there are a lot of different directions that we are going in. We’re not afraid to play a simple swing tune and then we will go to the really open territories. That’s what we like to do. We like going out of our comfort zones.”
Added Zanchini, “I guess this is really one of the power points of the band, this kind of capacity to stretch the music so much and walk through all those different genres and music styles. And because of this attitude, every concert is different. We may have the same setlist, but we bring different aromatics, different atmospheres. We really try every night to do something new.”