Ó 12 Points 2007

The great city of Berlin is a cultural powerhouse once again, and again

home to a bustling music scene that ranks among Europe’s most adventurous.

Within its diverse jazz milieu, more often celebrated for its free improvisers lies

a piano trio, rooted in the tradition and yet restlessly innovative. Seven years in

the making, pianist Carsten Daerr, bassist Oliver Potratz and drummer Eric

Schaefer have generated an intimate rapport that is now unlocking some very

persuasive music, and that appears to have few creative impediments. In Daerr,

this trio has a pianist of fairly epic sweep with a mastery of light and shade,

force and sensitivity, with a rhythm section in Potratz and Schaefer that’s

alive to all the possibilities to manipulate time and texture.