Thelonia, his most intimate work to date. "I had already made the decision for a solo album quite a while before the pandemic," Sebastian Sternal immediately clears up a possible misunderstanding. The fact that the multi-award-winning (WDR Jazz Prize, New German Jazz Prize, etc.) pianist and composer is now presenting his first solo work after almost 20 years of professional career may come as a surprise to some After all, with his large-format Symphonic Society on two albums (both received Jazz Echos, Vol. 2 also the annual prize of the German Record Critics), he has extremely successfully dissolved genre boundaries, among other things, through the combination of jazz octet and string quartet. Sternal then shone in a dynamic trio with the American star bassist Larry Grenadier and Jonas Burgwinkel - for the album Home he received his third Echo in 2018

Music and life. Art, no matter in which form, is always most authentic when it reflects life. Not only a certain aspect of life, but rather life with its enticing but equally merciless and often quite paradox diversity. The young Berlin based pianist Clara Haberkamp is alive. This sounds so basic and trivial, that it actually shouldn’t be mentioned here at all. But for Clara Haberkamp there is no separation between her life and music. She doesn’t postulate the proverbial “living for her music” and doesn’t play music to live, but life and music are simply one to her, and the new CD makes this very clear.

The Melt Trio's third album has an atmospheric yet exciting effect. Bernhard and Peter Meyer and Moritz Baumgärtner have refined their special style and show even greater will to design in details. Their combination of acoustic and electronic sounds is more subtle than ever, concrete influences from jazz and classical modern to post and prog rock can only be made out in a vague way, because the music simply sounds like a melt trio. It has always been one of the band's trademarks to merge composed and improvised passages in such a way that they can hardly be distinguished. Conventional structures, such as the succession of leitmotif and soloistic abstractions, have long been dissolved at Melt. And if you are looking for fretboard witchcraft for your own sake, you are welcome to find something else.

Once again, The Metamorphosis lives up to its name. On their new album, the top-class quartet of award-winning musical personalities (a total of six jazz echoes, New German Jazz Award, WDR Jazz Award) once again accomplishes a stylistic and tonal change of direction. Especially in direct comparison to his Homeward Bound Suite released in 2018. The spectacular orchestral work was widely praised at the time, for example as "a successful interweaving of jazz and classical elements with emotional depth" (Jazz Podium).

A new formation with old friends, a particular sound with familiar vignettes: Other Animal plays “alternative prog-jazz”. The newest project of Bernhard and Peter Meyer, who take the key roles as composers and producers in this quartet, unites players from Berlin and New York who harmonize perfectly together and inspire each other. The Meyer brothers are best known for their highly acclaimed Melt Trio. With their distinct music and sophisticated stylistics on semi-acoustic bass and electric guitar, they have been contributing to the Berlin-specific jazz sound for years.