Blick – 05. November 2019

Over less than three years, We Are Birds combined local stages, festivals and studio recording sessions. After being widely acclaimed in Marseille in 2012, they participated in the Jazz Festival in Dakar, Senegal. In 2013, they start performing in French festivals including "Jazz in Porquerolles". They spend most of 2014 creating and recording.

In November 2019, an opera sensation was to be experienced at the Leverkusen Erholungshaus: 232 years after its creation, a comic opera was premiered with "Scherz, List und Rache" (Joke, Cunning and Revenge), for which no one less than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had written the libretto. The music for it came from Goethe's childhood friend Philipp Christoph Kayser (1755-1823). Inspired by the Italian buffo opera, Goethe and Kayser wanted to create a new kind of German opera with "Scherz, List und Rache". The result was a turbulent three-person play about a young married couple who were cheated out of their inheritance by an old money-hungry doctor.In 2019 it was conductor Werner Ehrhardt and his ensemble l'arte del mondo who performed this opera rarity for the first time in its original instrumentation for large orchestra. Annika Boos, Cornel Frey and Florian Götz took over the vocal parts peppered with virtuoso passages. This is the world premiere recording of the singspiel in co-production with WDR and Bayer Arts & Culture

Goethe as an opera librettist: in November 2019, an opera sensation was to be experienced at the Leverkusener Erholungshaus: 232 years after its creation, a comic opera was premiered with "Scherz, List und Rache", to which none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had written the Libretto. The music was composed by Goethe's childhood friend Philipp Christoph Kayser (1755-1823).

On November 13, 2020, Thomas Naïm's new jazz/blues trio opus, "SOUNDS OF JIMI" (Rootless Blues/L'autre Distribution) has been released. This is an important event for Thomas cause it’s an album that pays tribute to a musician that had a great impact on him, the American guitarist Jimi Hendrix. This album also benefits from special guests Hugh Coltman, Erik Truffaz, Célia Kameni and Camille Bazbaz.

Guitarist, composer and producer, Thomas Naïm began playing the guitar at the age of 12. Influenced first by Rock, he then became interested in many musical currents: Funk, Brazilian music, Reggae or electronic music and finally became passionate about Jazz.