The Zig Zag Jazz Festival takes over the EUREF-Campus in Schöneberg this week, and the lineup reads like a wish list: Dee Dee Bridgewater, The Bad Plus on their farewell run, Kurt Rosenwinkel reuniting with Brad Mehldau, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Victor Wooten. Add Nils Kugelmann's five-night residency at A-Trane and a French chanson quartet in Kreuzberg, and you have one of the deepest jazz weeks Berlin will see all summer. Here is where to be.

Fusion Experience feat. Dave Weckl, Richard Bona, Ciro Manna & Michael Lecoq · Zig Zag · Mon 18:00

Italian guitarist Ciro Manna built this fusion unit to put four traditions in one room, and the names carry the weight. Dave Weckl drove the Chick Corea Elektric Band through the 1980s and landed in the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2000. Richard Bona, the Cameroonian bassist and singer once called the African Sting, filled the Jaco Pastorius chair in Joe Zawinul's band and toured with the Pat Metheny Group. French keyboardist Michael Lecoq, who has worked with Bona and Jean-Luc Ponty, rounds out a quartet built for the kind of high-wire interplay fusion promises and rarely delivers. Opening night, and a statement of intent.

Dee Dee Bridgewater · Zig Zag · Mon 20:30

Three Grammys, a Tony for playing Glinda in the original Broadway The Wiz, and a 2017 NEA Jazz Master medal: Bridgewater has one of the most decorated résumés in the music. She rebuilt her American profile on Verve in the 1990s with tributes to Ella Fitzgerald (Dear Ella) and Billie Holiday, then founded her own label, DDB Records, in 2006. Her latest, 2025's Elemental, is a duo with pianist Bill Charlap, who plays the festival himself two nights later, and picked up another Grammy nomination. She still commands a stage like pure voltage. Go.

Nils Kugelmann: Rebirth «Where Nights Unfold», Residency Night 1 · A-Trane · Tue 20:30

While the festival dominates the week, the young German bassist Nils Kugelmann sets up a five-night summer residency at A-Trane, celebrating five years of his trio. Kugelmann records for ACT, the label that has championed a generation of European players; his 2023 debut Stormy Beauty was named one of the year's ten best international jazz albums by BR Klassik, and the trio, with pianist Luca Zambito and drummer Sebastian Wolfgruber, took first prize at the European Young Artist Jazz Award in Burghausen the same year. Their second album, Life Score, was recorded in Berlin and released in 2025. A residency is a rare thing: five nights to watch a band think out loud.

Stacey Kent · Zig Zag · Wed 18:00

The London-based, New Jersey-born singer earned a Grammy nomination for 2007's platinum Breakfast on the Morning Tram and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French culture ministry. Her secret weapon is literary: her husband, saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, produces the records and co-writes songs with the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, who first fell for Kent's voice when he chose her They Can't Take That Away from Me for Desert Island Discs. In 2024 Ishiguro published a whole book of lyrics written for her. Kent sings standards and these new songs with the same unhurried, conversational intimacy, the kind that makes a festival tent feel like a small room.

Ledisi · Zig Zag · Wed 20:30

New Orleans-born, Oakland-raised, and a Grammy winner after twelve nominations, Ledisi moves between soul, R&B and jazz with a voice built for both church and club. Her most acclaimed jazz turn is Ledisi Sings Nina, her 2021 tribute to Nina Simone backed by the Metropole Orkest and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and she has spent years inhabiting that jazz-and-blues songbook on stage and in a PBS special. At the festival she brings that lineage to a big room. Expect the standards to land like scripture.

Bill Charlap Trio · Zig Zag · Thu 18:00

If you want to hear the Great American Songbook played by someone who knows every trapdoor in it, Charlap is your pianist. His trio with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington (no relation) has been together since 1997, a model of straight-ahead elegance on Blue Note. He won a Grammy for The Silver Lining, his Jerome Kern record with Tony Bennett, and his 2024 live album And Then Again was cut at the Village Vanguard. He is married to the pianist Renee Rosnes and long ran the Jazz in July series at New York's 92nd Street Y. Two nights after Dee Dee Bridgewater sings their Elemental duo, here he is under his own name.

The Bad Plus: Farewell Tour · Zig Zag · Thu 20:30

This is close to your last chance. In January 2026, after 26 years, founders Reid Anderson (bass) and Dave King (drums) announced The Bad Plus would disband. The Minneapolis band made its name detonating rock and pop, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Aphex Twin, Blondie, starting with 2003's These Are the Vistas on Columbia, and reinvented itself in 2021 as a guitar-and-sax quartet with Ben Monder and Chris Speed. They toured 2025's Complex Emotions, their nineteenth album. Loud, funny, structurally fearless, and going out on their own terms. Do not skip this one.

Nadi Lafi Quartet · Yorckschlösschen · Thu 20:00

For a night away from the festival, head to Yorckschlösschen (Yorckstraße 15), the Kreuzberg pub that has been a Home of Jazz & Blues for decades. The French singer Nadi Lafi, Berlin-based since 2003, folds chanson, jazz and swing into an elegant, low-lit set. It runs on the pass-the-hat model, so bring cash for the musicians. This is the other side of Berlin jazz: no campus, no big tent, just a room, a band and a Thursday.

MonoNeon · Zig Zag · Fri 21:00

Dywane Thomas Jr., the Memphis bassist who performs as MonoNeon, was the last bassist Prince hired before his death in 2016, cutting tracks at Paisley Park. He won a Grammy for his work on Nas's King's Disease and has recorded with Jacob Collier, Mavis Staples and George Clinton; Flea once called him the greatest electric bass player alive. He studied microtonality at Berklee and plays a right-handed bass flipped upside down, chasing quarter-tone bends nobody else reaches for. Loud, absurd, deeply funky. A festival wild card in the best sense.

Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet feat. Brad Mehldau · Zig Zag · Sat 21:00

This is the reunion the festival was built around. Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and pianist Brad Mehldau came up together in the early-1990s Greenwich Village scene around Smalls, and they have circled each other ever since; Mehldau played on Rosenwinkel's 2005 Deep Song. Rosenwinkel has called Berlin home for years, teaching at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule and running his Heartcore label from the city; his 2001 The Next Step was once voted the most influential jazz record of the century by JazzTimes. Mehldau, the most quietly influential pianist of his generation, records for Nonesuch. With Doug Weiss on bass: two of modern jazz's deepest thinkers, on Rosenwinkel's home turf. The ticket of the week.

Victor Wooten Brothers · Zig Zag · Sat 18:30

Victor Wooten is a five-time Grammy winner, three-time Bass Player of the Year, and the low-end engine of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since 1988. Here he plays with his actual brothers, Regi on guitar, Roy Future Man on drums, Joseph on keys, the family band from Newport News, Virginia that has been playing together since childhood. This tour is their first collaborative record in years and the first since the 2010 death of their saxophonist brother Rudy, weaving his archival tapes into new music. Virtuosity in service of family, which is a different and warmer thing than virtuosity for its own sake.

Gonzalo Rubalcaba Quartet feat. Chris Potter, Larry Grenadier & Eric Harland · Zig Zag · Sun 18:00

Dizzy Gillespie called the Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba the greatest he had heard in a decade, and Charlie Haden brought him to Blue Note. He has the Grammys to match, including two for his Haden collaborations. For this quartet he convenes three of the most in-demand players anywhere: saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Larry Grenadier (the anchor of Brad Mehldau's trio for three decades), and drummer Eric Harland. They documented their first run together as First Meeting: Live at Dizzy's Club in 2025. A festival closer with four leaders and no passengers.

That is the week. Twelve shows, a festival that only comes around like this once in a while, and a residency worth catching more than once. Whatever you make it to, go early, tip the band, and talk to the person next to you. See you out there.