Ensemble Uwaga! – a virtuoso classical violinist with a penchant for Eastern European music, a jazz violinist with punk rock experience, a masterful improvisational accordionist with Balkan sounds in his blood, and a bassist who feels just as at home in symphony orchestras as he does in jazz combos or funk bands… Four musicians who couldn’t be more different embarked on the adventure of making music together in 2007. In the beginning, the pure joy of playing was the main focus – and it effortlessly transferred to every audience. Over the years of playing together, the four influence each other, and their different stylistic focuses grow together into a very unique sound, somewhere between classical, jazz, Balkan, and pop music.

For 17 years now, Uwaga! has been working with unbridled enthusiasm on their shared vision: music without borders that makes people happy, that goes straight to the heart and gets your feet moving.

The musicians have no trouble maintaining their irrepressible enthusiasm for playing: fortunately, in a world of music without borders, it never gets boring. The ensemble’s multi-layered sound is both orchestral and percussive. In their search for expanded means of expression, encounters ultimately arise that are intended to further exploit these musical opposites. On the one hand, Uwaga! played its own arrangements and compositions with the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen for the first time in 2013.

The extremely fruitful and successful collaboration is being expanded and continued, while at the same time the quartet is beginning to perform with major symphony orchestras throughout Germany. The orchestras are immediately infected by the quartet’s enthusiasm, creating a very individual orchestral crossover sound, which was finally captured on CD (Swan Fake, ARS Produktion) in 2016 together with the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra. The ensemble has thrilled audiences at renowned festivals and in prestigious concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, and many more.

Uwaga! has played concerts with renowned orchestras such as the WDR Funkhausorchester, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, and many more.

The members of Ensemble Uwaga! are:

Christoph König, violin, viola
Maurice Maurer, violin
Miroslav Misic, accordion
Jakob Kühnemann, double bass

Source: https://www.uwagaquartett.de/, abridged