Wood and Steel Trio supply an antidote to the noise of the world: they create a utopia in which each note receives value and meaning. Harmony may dissolve into dissonance at any given moment and thus does not exist for its own sake but is only one of a myriad of possibilities. The trio's unique instrumentation of string bass, marimba- or vibraphone and dobro helps the musicians to sculpt aesthetic musical forms.
While the modern jazz is a point of departure, the musicians use their original compositions to explore new connections and possibilities offered by the materiality of sound and rhythmic
layers while steering a steady course between extravagance and minimalism.
Nothing is off limits for them thus their musical style is hard to define. The important thing is to enjoy the journey and what more could we want than to accept their offer to share it with them?

Short biographies:

Roland Neffe was born in 1970 in Graz / Austria and has lived in Berlin since 1995.
He studied both classical percussion and jazz vibraphone with Gary Burton at Berklee College of Music / Boston and at the Hochschule der Künste / Berlin with David Friedman. He has made a name for himself as a musician who crosses cultural borders. Equally at home in jazz as well as in contemporary music, he "blows the audience's expectations" (Jazz Podium) and is a frequently booked guest at various festivals at home and abroad due to his impressive skills.

Christian Kögel, born in 1967, lives in Berlin since 1990. In the same year he founded his own trio and together with them won several jazz awards in Germany. After having studied classical guitar and electric guitar at the Hochschule der Künste / Berlin he studied Oud and traditional Arabic music with the Syrian oud virtuoso Farhan Sabbagh. He is at home in the area between jazz, singer / songwriter, chamber music and traditional Arab and Afghan music and he plays music and produces it as a member of several bands (flexkögel, Mattar 4, Lauer Large, Marc Muellbauers Kaleidoscope, Jazzanova live, etc.). His lyrical play and his perceptive understanding of music has taken him on tour to various countries like the USA and Canada (where he is a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax), to Russia and Afghanistan.

Bass player Marc Muellbauer, born in London in 1968, has been playing for 17 years with the Julia Hülsmann Trio and leads his own band of nine musicians called Kaleidoscope. His musical background ranges from contemporary music to Argentinian tango, he has also been in a number of other jazz bands, including the Lisbeth Quartett and the Uli Kempendorff Quartet. Muellbauer teaches string bass at the Jazz Institute Berlin.