When approached with the question if he wants to do a jazz version of Mahler, Haggai Cohen-Milo wasn’t so sure at first: “You know the posters you see, ‘classical music meets jazz’? I don’t want to do that.” For him, simply taking classical pieces and making them sound jazzy—by slapping a swing beat over a symphony—misses the point entirely. “But if you want me to write something completely new in relation to Mahler, I will do it. But it won’t sound like Mahler,” he recalls his conversation with Daniel Kühnel, Intendant of the Symphoniker Hamburg, the beginning of his latest project, Gravitations.
I met the Berlin-based double bassist, composer and bandleader for a coffee shortly before the album release, but the Gravitations journey actually began two years ago when Haggai was approached and commissioned by the classical music institution to reimagine Das Lied von der Erde. The process started with one piece, but as it resonated with everyone involved, the project grew naturally into something bigger. “And suddenly we had all this music. The album is just a fraction of it,” Haggai recalls. Recording an album was never the plan, but when faced with four hours of recorded live material, he realized he had something to share with the world.
What’s Sacred Is the Feeling
Next to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, the album takes Verdi’s Requiem and Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune as its starting points and develops into something multilayered and distorted, complex yet deeply affecting. Careful listeners might catch a glimpse of the original motifs, but even without familiarity with the inspiration, one can feel the depths of the compositions. The album’s complexity reveals itself in the way rhythms and melodies overlap, sometimes clashing, sometimes dissolving into moments of quiet introspection.
Photo by Katha Mau
Despite drawing from a broad range of musical sources, the music stays remarkably focused, hanging together with an ever-shifting soundscape that oscillates sophisticatedly between beats-fuelled intensity and meditative ambience. Rather than simply adapting or “jazzing up” what he had in front of him, Haggai set out to write something entirely new: “I studied the original deeply. But instead of copying or rearranging it, I realized what I can do is, basing my music on the same topics and themes—musically and not musically.”
Take the Requiem, for example. “It’s a very religious text, which was not what we wanted to do. But we still kept the topics of devotion, the ceremony, talking about death—that is relevant for everybody. We just made it from our perspective, in our age, we are in a totally different world”, Haggai explains. Stimulus, whose spoken word and rap feature prominently on the album, echoes this sentiment. “I really liked this idea of ceremonious but not religious. This piece is about shaming and guilt, we switched it around and thought of the circles of guilting yourself and coming out of that guilt,”
Stimulus shares about the writing process. I caught up with him before he joined the Haggai Cohen-Milo Band to present parts of the album at Framed Festival in Berlin – an event that has carved out a unique space for itself in the city’s music landscape by championing multidisciplinary, boundary-pushing performances. Its ethos revolves around celebrating collaboration across genres and forms, breaking down barriers between classical, jazz, electronic, and experimental music.
The instrumental arrangements follow a similar logic. “The Verdi does have some direct quotes,” Haggai notes. “For example, I took eight bars of music and expanded them to create a ten-minute piece. So it is based on the same harmony, but just extremely stretched out.” The approach is less about adaptation and more about translation—taking the essence of the original and letting it resonate in a new context.
For Stimulus, who usually operates in hip-hop, jazz, and electronic realms, the project was both a challenge and a liberation:
Photo by Katha Mau
“It was nice to be in a space where I was judged on how accurate I am to the material, and the material is very dense and serious. In electronic and hip-hop genres, you are almost judged if you are too serious. It was liberating to go all the way deep.”
Furthermore, he also appreciated the structure that came with working based on existing material: “Usually my work comes from the inside. There is no limit if it’s just you, each of us are infinite by ourselves. It was interesting to have some guardrails where I needed to be myself within something.”
Bring Friends, Not Expectations
As the original Mahler piece had singers, Haggai decided to bring in the vocalist to not lose the lyrical part of it, but again to make it personal and current: “I felt that rap is the most relevant to me.” The lyrics Mahler used were already translated from Chinese poetry, so this was just a continuation of translation and adaptation. By boldly embracing hip hop influences and blending them with classical and jazz traditions, Haggai explores jazz’s inherent and profound adaptability and its power to continually transform and reinvent itself.
The ensemble for Gravitations further features saxophonists Emma Rawicz and Maria Kim Grand, synthesiser and drums from James Shipp, trumpeters Philip Dizack and Justin Stanton, guitarist Tamuz Dekel, drummers Amir Bresler and Ziv Ravitz. Haggai emphasizes that the collaborators are a vital part of the process from the outset: “Stimmy [Stimulus] and the band are integral parts of the composition. I really think about who is going to perform when I write.”
What stands out when listening to the album is how this group doesn’t just serve the composition, but continuously feeds off each other’s presence—shaping the music in real time. There’s a palpable sense of trust and curiosity in how ideas are passed around: motifs surface, are transformed by another player, or dissolve into unexpected textures. The interplay feels intimate and organic, allowing for spontaneous shifts between explosive collective energy and delicate, unguarded moments. This collaborative spark is at the heart of Gravitations, making each recording feel immediate, vulnerable, and deeply human.
The decision to use the live recordings and not go back into a studio was far from being purely logistical. “Jazz has a big tradition of live recordings,” Haggai says. “Some of my favourite recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet or John Coltrane and Charlie Parker are live recordings.”
“There is something special about live, about the interaction with the audience. There is no editing, no correcting notes. I prefer to hear something that is not necessarily perfect or polished.”
This ethos is central to his approach to music as a whole: “I was always attracted to music because of the social aspect of playing with other people and interacting with the audience. For me, making music is a social event.” Gravitations is ultimately about connection, too—not just among musicians, but with listeners. Stimulus recalls bringing his social circleto the live performance: “I took it as an opportunity to invite all my friends and people who follow my music into the space. Some were a bit lost, but many of them were so thankful. They never felt invited to a concert hall before.”
Photo by Katha Mau
Rooted, Not Restricted
Taking down barriers and the tension of blurring genres is something both artists embrace. When asked how they navigate honouring tradition and pushing into new territory at the same time, Haggai tells me: “With a lot of respect and care. If people still have criticism, I don’t care because I know I did something that I believe in.” Stimulus adds: “I really enjoyed the challenge, the opportunity to do research.”
The live atmosphere on the album brings out a strong sense of collective energy, where the music becomes a shared experience between performers and listeners. It’s an experience best shared. Haggai suggests listening “maybe with some friends, so you can react on it, share your thoughts. It doesn’t have to be a sterile listening environment. Rather just hanging out, and you say: Hey, there is this new album, let’s check it out all together.”
The album’s release is another step within a larger journey. This autumn, the project heads to the Lausitz Festival on September 4 and 5 in Cottbus, then on to Shanghai for a multidisciplinary production that weaves in traditional Chinese opera. Looking further ahead, Haggai is set to unveil two fresh works in 2026, drawing inspiration from Dvořák’s New World Symphony and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Gravitations by Haggai Cohen-Milo & Stimulus is out now. Stay up to date with Haggai Cohen-Milo & Stimulus.