Trombonist/composer Kalia Vandever makes their Minnesota debut at Berlin with a solo performance. Ross Clowser opens and closes the evening with International Anthem–inflected DJ sets.

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Kalia Vandever is a Grammy Award-winning trombonist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. Their distinctive approach to the trombone is defined by their sonorous tone and lyrical improvisational voice. They lean into the challenges of the instrument and allow patience and melody to guide their process.

In their compositional practice, Vandever draws from their love of songs and improvisation, creating a landscape of sounds that resonate in the body and hold the listener. They released their debut ensemble album, In Bloom, in 2019. Their sophomore album, Regrowth (New Amsterdam Records, 2022), "confirms [their] strengths as a composer and bandleader with a distinctly contemporary point of view" (Nate Chinen, WBGO Jazz). Their debut solo album, We Fell In Turn—featuring their works for trombone, voice and electronics—was released on AKP Records in 2023. Their newest album, Another View, features Mary Halvorson, Kanoa Mendenhall, and Kayvon Gordon and was praised by Downbeat for “its entrancing, cyclical rhythms and longing melodicism.”

Vandever has toured and performed internationally with their quartet, performing at festivals such as the Winter Jazz Festival and BRIC Jazz Festival. They are also for their work as a sideperson, performing with jazz artists including Joel Ross, Immanuel Wilkins, and Fay Victor. Vandever has also performed with popular artists including Harry Styles, Lizzo, Japanese Breakfast, Moses Sumney, Jennifer Hudson, and Demi Lovato. They are a founding member of tilt, a Brooklyn-based collective bringing together the voices of Isabel Crespo Pardo, Carmen Quill, and Vandever.

Vandever received their Bachelor of Music degree in jazz studies from the Juilliard School in 2017. They are an awardee of the 2022 Next Jazz Legacy, a program founded by New Music USA and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. They were also selected to curate the 2022 Music Series for The Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton. Along with their performance work, Vandever has been commissioned to write works for groups and individuals including Tesla Quartet, the Westerlies, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, and Hats+Heels.

Vandever is on faculty at the New England Conservatory and has led masterclasses at universities including California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago Illinois, Cal State Northridge, Saddleback College, University of Maine Farmington, and University of Missouri.

Vandever endorses Conn Selmer and Bach instruments as well as Denis Wick London.

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Hailing from the prairies of Iowa, Ross Clowser is an American composer, improviser, scholar, guitarist, and DJ. His current projects include the Ross Clowser Quartet; Starflower; and People Electric, an intermedia project with his sibling, Anna Clowser. He released his first studio album, “this is how we move through time,” on Aura Vortex Records in 2025.