ELSA & BERGMAN - Mountain Tour

"Courage, fear, longing and chaos. Wildness is followed by immeasurable tenderness. You want to lie down in her music; lifted, comforted and caressed. Like under water, for a few breaths."

ELSA - that's the four-piece band around singer Elsa Steixner. Founded while studying music in Vienna and the Netherlands, the band has been active internationally since 2022 and has already thrilled audiences at renowned venues such as the Vienna Konzerthaus (concert hall) and the Musis Stadstheater Arnhem. Influenced by the urgency of artists such as Nina Simone and Abdullah Ibrahim as well as the compositional diversity and sophistication of songwriters such as Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell, a foundation of soul, folk, jazz and RnB is created from which the idiosyncratic, always inviting compositions of the band ELSA develop. This embracing of tradition, combined with a curious and attentive view of the present, lends the music a timelessness without diminishing its topicality.

On their new album, ELSA plead for uncompromising courage. JUMP! - over your own shadow, into cold water, high up, deep down. The only thing that stands between us and life is our own fear - and we must not feed it by giving in to it. "All you gotta do is jump into the ocean of your fear", as if it were the easiest thing in the world. On the one hand, it is this daring, the leap into the unknown, and on the other, the inward courage that ELSA wants to awaken - openness to doubt, ambivalence and difficult questions. "Who will handle my affairs when I'm gone?" The great silence is alluded to again and again and it is sometimes the most vulnerable parts of the album that are confronted most resolutely. Because it is precisely this overcoming of the greatest fear that makes us so wonderfully happy and free.

BERGMAN is the new project by New Zealand-Berlin-based singer, composer and political scientist Teresa Bergman. After three acclaimed albums, appearances at ELBJAZZ, Reeperbahn Festival, STIMMEN Festival Lörrach and Burg Herzberg Festival as well as collaborations with the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg, she is opening a new chapter with BERGMAN.
The Mountain Tour starts in January 2026 - with the new single of the same name, a fresh sound and a new stage constellation. The tour is an exclusive foretaste of the upcoming project and combines BERGMAN's new sound world with reinterpreted "all-time favorites" from the Teresa Bergman era for the first time. A homage to what was - and a departure full of energy, up the next mountain.
At the center is her extraordinary voice - powerful, versatile, more experimental than ever before and full of expression. BERGMAN combines avant-art pop with a jazzy sensibility, carried by her very own groove.
We don't move mountains by whispering at them. For BERGMAN, art and commitment are symbiotic. Their music responds to an audience searching for depth - in an age of doomscrolling driven by a yearning for critical reflection and human connection. The sound is eclectic and unpredictable, moving between intimacy and grandeur, between complexity and catchiness.
The first single Mountain will be released in spring 2026 and is a manifesto for our planet: clear, catchy and a call for collective action. Playful vocals, changing beats and organic body percussion invite you to sing - and move - along.