Veronika Morscher (centre) receiving the award from Bonn Mayor Ashok Sridharan (right) with Festival Director Peter Materna Photo credit: Heike Fischer/ JazzFest Bonn

Sebastian writes: 

The 2019 Bonn Jazz Festival, in its tenth year, has just ended. On its closing day, it awarded an inaugural Förderpreis (literally sponsorship prize) to the Austrian-born singer Veronika Morscher.

Morscher directs the Cologne-based four-woman “neo a capella” group Of Cabbages And Kings. She founded the group in 2015, after studies in Boston, Vienna and Cologne. They won second place in the Burghausen Young Jazz Award in 2018, and their first album Neon was released by Klaeng last year.

The prize consists of a one-off award of EUR1,500 to go towards production costs, plus a bursary of EUR500/month for three months.

The press release state: “Jazzfest Bonn is awarding this prize for the first time this year. This award will be awarded annually to a particularly talented young artist in the field of creative jazz music. In Germany there is a multitude of well-trained young jazz musicians with a strong work ethic and personal skills, but performance opportunities are nonetheless scarce. Jazzfest Bonn is pleased to support this project.”

Jury members were Anja Buchmann, Ralf Dombrowski and Sebastian Scotney

LINK: Of Cabbages and Kings website 
JazzFest Bonn