JazzExchange 2025

Event information

The Austrian Cultural Forum London is delighted to invite you to this year's edition of the concert series JazzExchange which aims to spotlight cutting edge Austrian groups and UK based ensembles curated by Guido Spannocchi
This year's evening will be held on 23.June from 7:30pm downstairs at The Vortex on showcase the duo of violinist Cozy Friedel and pianist Martin Listabarth as well as the duo of cellist Shirley Smart and pianist Robert Mitchell.

Information about the artists:

The violinist and singer Cozy Friedel, born in Ilmenau, Germany, lives and works in Vienna. She
began learning the violin at the age of 7 and is characterized by “a powerful, expressive violin
tone, a sense of dramaturgy in both her improvisations and compositions as well as an openness
to a wide variety of musical influences and their fusion into a vital, energetic amalgam”.
The winner of the Ö1 Jazz Scholarship 2020 and Women in Jazz Prize Halle 2023 is part of
various projects in different line-ups in jazz, rock, pop, theater, avant-garde and classical music,
with which she performs internationally.

Martin Listabarth is an excellent musical storyteller whose music begins exactly where words no
longer suffice.
His music is deeply rooted in jazz but also moves between classical and pop - all garnished with a
touch of oriental esprit. His compositions are inspired by landscapes and cities, people, and
personal encounters. This is reflected in highly emotional music - sometimes melancholic,
sometimes full of tension, and then again witty, peppered with harmonic and rhythmic refinements
that are "reminiscent of the lively, cantabile lines of Stefano Bollani" (Wiener Zeitung).
British Pianist Magazine described him as "one to watch“,
BR-Klassik described him as a "musician who has a high recognition value both as a
pianist and as a composer“, and he received a nomination for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

Shirley Smart:
Originally trained under Raphael Wallfisch at the Guilldhall School of Music, and Janos Starker in Paris, she subsequently moved to Jerusalem, where she remained for 10 years, studying and performing a wide variety of musical traditions from the North Africa, Turkey and Middle East. Smart has quickly become known as one of the most creative cellists on the music scene and has worked with many leading jazz and world music groups, including Antonio Forcione, Mulato Astatke, Gilad Atzmon, Neil Cowley, Julian Ferraretto, Robert Mitchell, Maya Youssef and Alice Zawadzki. She leads her own trio, with John Crawford on piano, and Demi Garcia Sabat on drums, and band Melange.
Shirley is Professor of Musicianship and Improvisation at the Royal College of Music in London, and an Assistant Lecturer at Kent University.
She also teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, and RCM Junior Department, as well as a visiting tutor for the National Youth Jazz Collective, and an in demand workshop leader.

Robert Mitchell
Award-winning pianist, keyboard player, composer, songwriter, festival curator, poet, and author. He has recorded fourteen albums of his own projects as well as 3 poetry collections. Apart from being a pianist, composer and innovator, he is a festival creator and curator as well as a highly respected educator. Robert leads the groups Little Black Book, TRUE THINK, Epiphany3 and the Flame. He is a professor at Guildhall School Of Music And Drama (Jazz Piano), Mentor/Task Force Member at Black Lives In Music, YMM teacher, Steinway Artist, EDI Lead at Music HE and recently taught/returned to the Paris Conservatoire and Pole Sup. Robert has won awards – BBC Jazz Awards (Innovation, as part of the F-ire Collective), Best Jazz Album (BBC DJ Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards), a Paul Hamlyn composition award and has been nominated for many more including 2017 British Jazz Composer Award. “Robert Mitchell is one of Britain’s finest and most versatile pianist-composer-improvisors” The Wire Magazine.