Berlin’s jazz scene comes with a reputation: porous, international, sprawling across countless basements, studios, backrooms and late-night sessions. It’s a city where everyone insists there are “no rules,” yet the gatekeeping is often subtle, inherited, unspoken. Among the noise and self-styled mythology, intention can easily get lost. Enter rejazz-festival, returning for its sixth edition from 20–22 November 2025 with a clarity the scene rarely grants itself. Founded in 2020 by Dutch vocalist, composer and artistic director Jacobien Vlasman, the festival focuses on projects led or co-led by musicians who identify as women — including cis, trans, inter and non-binary artists who are read as women onstage. Not as a quota, not as branding, but as a structural correction. A recalibration of the listening space. And crucially, as Vlasman stresses, not a limitation. “I don’t program based on gender – I program based on music. Music has no gender, and it should be valued that way,” she says. “The point is simply that female and female-identifying artists are still underrepresented on festival and club stages, especially as headliners. That’s why I started this festival.”

The result is not a niche bubble, but a widening field. Over three nights at Kunstfabrik Schlot — an intimate room where every breath onstage feels amplified — rejazz sketches a portrait of contemporary jazz that is far more varied, expansive and emotionally intelligent than the mythology of Berlin improvisation might suggest. It is a festival built not on taxonomy, but on the refusal to shrink possibility.

What sets rejazz apart in the city’s overcrowded festival landscape is not simply its focus on women-identifying bandleaders — though that alone challenges decades of erasure. What distinguishes it is the way Vlasman curates the emotional architecture of the night. “I think in contrasts and in breathing,” she explains. “A solo or duo set can draw you inward, shift your attention, make you listen differently. A large ensemble can widen the space again and change the energy of the room. I place them so that they respond to each other, so the audience travels between intimacy and collective force.”

The 2025 lineup embodies that philosophy with unusual clarity:
the poetic depth of Ella Zirina,
the multi-voiced architecture of Holly Schlott’s UNIQUE,
the contemplative precision of Julia Kadel,
the kaleidoscopic storytelling of Sanne Sanne,
the lyrical sensitivity of Flick/Bruckner,
and the explosive fire of Evi Filippou’s inEvitable extended.

Each performance counters the idea that innovation follows a single lineage — or belongs to a single demographic. Instead, rejazz suggests that the future of jazz is already here, already plural, already rewriting its terms. That plurality also shapes the room itself. “When a stage reflects the diversity that exists in real life, the room opens: people feel seen, safe and included,” Vlasman notes. “That in turn allows artists to show up as their full selves. The energy becomes more curious, generous, warm and fearless.”

In Berlin — a city that prides itself on experimentation while still clinging to pockets of conservatism — that shift is quietly radical. Not in the way free jazz was once radical, not in the way electronics once disrupted the club–concert divide, but in the way conditions for listening are transformed. It is the kind of structural change that doesn’t announce itself loudly, yet moves through the ecosystem with long reverberations. What feels most radical in jazz right now, Vlasman says, is not a sound but a mindset: “Jazz has become less about a fixed aesthetic and more about a mindset: curiosity, risk, listening, and the freedom to shape your own musical world.”

If rejazz began as a corrective, its long-term goal is a world where such correction is no longer needed. “My goal is not to curate ‘by gender’ forever,” Vlasman says. “My goal is to reach a point where I can curate freely – because it has become a natural part of the scene to see all genders on stage, without it being a statement.” Berlin is not there yet. Not even close. Women and women-identifying artists still appear too rarely as headliners; conservatories remain overwhelmingly male, especially in instrumental departments; young musicians often pass through institutions without encountering role models who look like them. And then there is the ecosystem problem: shrinking cultural budgets, rising costs, and the precariousness that shapes nearly every corner of Berlin’s music world. “We do have funding models,” Vlasman notes, “but they are increasingly underfinanced, and cultural budgets keep shrinking even as demand continues to rise. Long-term structures — including the possibility of institutional support — would help artists, festivals and venues work with more stability and freedom.”

This is where rejazz feels especially vital. It is not only a festival, but a test case:
What happens when the frame widens?
What happens when musicians are given conditions that allow for risk instead of survival mode?
What happens when a lineup refuses the familiar hierarchies of who gets to lead, who gets to experiment, who gets to define?

The answer, at least in the Schlot’s warm, close acoustics, is music that feels startlingly alive — not because it is new, but because it is unfiltered. Because it does not apologize for complexity or ambition. Because it makes room for voices that Berlin, for all its reputation, has not always known how to hear. Maybe the biggest misconception, Vlasman observes, is that the scene assumes it already knows itself. “Berlin is so diverse that it’s easy to forget how many parallel strands exist. The exchange between them does happen, but it could sometimes be even richer.”  Rejazz invites that richness forward. It doesn’t reinvent the city’s jazz landscape; it simply reveals the parts that were always there, waiting for the mic, waiting for the headline slot, waiting for the room. And across three nights in November, that room sounds like a future where openness is not mythology but practice — built patiently, deliberately, and without apology.

Rejazz-festival #6
20–22 November 2025
Kunstfabrik Schlot, Berlin