About

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Deutsche Version

“…I was really taken with this record…” Robert Elms – BBC London

“Soul Trio is an authentic album drawing on vintage instruments with a 21st century attitude.” Thomas Fletcher – Jazz Journal UK

Artist Bio

Since the early 1970s Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric piano sounds had the most profound and sustainable impact on the music heritage of funk and soul jazz. Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder or Donny Hathaway, none of these music legends could resist the seducing sound of these instruments.

For several years now Berlin-born pianist, composer, university lecturer and curator Matti Klein has played „Wurli“ and „Rhodes“, as he affectionately calls them, as an integral part of his music. It all began with the highly successful funk jazz quartet Mo’ Blow. The Rhodes sound was an indispensable component in the band’s successful ten year legacy. Mo‘ Blow released three albums on the renowned ACT label, won the Audience Award and the Jury Prize at the Jazz & Blues Award Berlin in 2008, and the coveted Future Sound Award at the Leverkusener Jazztage in 2011.

Educated by Hubert Nuss, Wolfgang Köhler and Rolf Zielke at the Berlin University of the Arts, Matti Klein toured with Mo‘ Blow after completing his studies, played and arranged music for pop stars such as Herbert Grönemeyer, Sarah Connor and Jimmy Somerville. He has also worked as a soloist, sideman or musical director with many jazz greats such as Nils Landgren, David T. Walker, Ed Motta, Allan Harris and Torsten Goods.

Over the years he performed more than 1000 national and international concerts, traveling to legendary jazz venues such as the Blue Note in Tokyo, Ronnie Scott’s in London, the Highline Ballroom in New York or the New Morning in Paris, as well as major festivals such as Jazz in Marciac (France), Pori Jazz Festival (Finland), the Leverkusener Jazztage (Germany), the Elbjazz Festival (Germany) and the Jazz Baltica (Germany).

Alongside the bass clarinet and tenor saxophone of Lars Zander and the tight grooves of ex-Mo‘ Blow drummer André Seidel, Matti Klein’s Wurlitzer and especially his Rhodes bass sound have constituted the essential foundation of his new Soul Trio’s sound concept since 2017. 

The debut album „Soul Trio“, released in January 2020, and the band’s concerts have received the highest accolades from both critics and audiences alike. German music journal Jazzthetik praises the „epic beauty“ of the trio’s music, „which is unparalleled,“ and radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk Kultur even jubilated: „It grooves tremendously (…) just like it did in the finest days of soul under the Tamla/Motown roof.“

Though rich in connotations, this music does not simply rest in one period. Traditional roots flow naturally. The Soul Trio sound, however, always remains progressive and highly receptive to the present. Over the past four years, Matti Klein, Lars Zander and André Seidel have succeeded in cultivating a fine-tuned and homogenous partnership that grants all musicians enough artistic freedom to shed the traditional idiomatic restraints of traditional soul jazz in order to evolve this genre. 

After the highly acclaimed debut, a follow-up album, „Soul Trio Live On Tape“, will be released at the end of April 2021. The recording grants intriguing insights into the trio’s evolution and sound philosophy. Recordings are assembled from the band’s first studio live session, which was recorded directly to tape in February 2018 at Lovelite Studio in Berlin. The musical footage consists of songs that the keyboardist had originally written for Mo‘ Blow and that now shine in new arrangements. All musicians played without headphones in the same room, creating a fascinating sound document, which depicts the „real deal“ without any post-processing, overdubs or corrections. A live concert atmosphere – unaltered and pure! 

Thorsten Hingst, 2021