With their very own musical language Julia Kadel, Karl-Erik Enkelmann and Steffen Roth have become a regular talking point in recent years and established themselves as an expressive jazz piano trio also beyond Germany's borders. Releasing the first two records at Blue Note/Universal they were nominated in 2015 for the prestigious German Music Award Echo Jazz as “Newcomer of the year” and Julia Kadel as “Female instrumentalist of the year”. Just recently they released their latest work Kaskaden. Julia Kadel's variable competitions, her imaginative playing and the band's striking improvisations became more courageous over time. On Kaskaden they have now reached a new dimension of detail and intensity. More determined than ever, the trio balances the fine line between harmony and atonality, intuition and reflection, poetry and austerity."Stylistically, we have become a bit more extreme again," outlines the undogmatic bandleader their latest artistic development, "we have taken more liberties and discovered new harmonies for ourselves." Unpredictable turns, the playful and tonal richness of variation of all participants as well as long, nuance long arcs of suspense motivate to a repetitive listening which is rewarded with always new impressions.
The live qualities of the trio, which was founded in 2011, its subtle interaction and intuitive understanding encouraged the trio to produce the new album under live conditions - especially as it took place in the legendary MPS studio in Villingen (Black Forest, Germany).Its history dates back to 1958, great jazz pianists such as Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Monty Alexander and Bill Evans once recorded here. With the Bösendorfer Grand Imperial grand piano – once acquired for Friedrich Gulda - in the center surrounded by classic analogue technology, Kaskaden was captured to tape one-to-one. This influenced not only the charismatic sound but also the special atmosphere that characterises the album. Furthermore, the location of the recording not only came as a surprise but probably also as a small sensation to every fan of MPS as the Julia Kadel Trio is the first MPS act after 35 years recording again in the historic studios, the popular German magazine Der Spiegel reported about it.