PLATZ // BEYER // KNEER // MARIEN

improvised music at the Kühlspot Social Club

Jeff Platz, New York, Boston area guitarist composer, has toured extensively for the past decade throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has performed in various music festivals worldwide such as New York City’s What is Jazz? festival, the Heidelberg jazz festival, Amsterdam Crossing Borders festival, the International Jazz Festival Münster and most recently the Bia Jazz Festival in Milan Italy. The Berlin based music journalist Wolf Kampmann writes, “Platz’s music is generous although never accidental. The secret of its uninhibited quality lies more in Platz’s playful use of the familiar where intuition, feeling, and memory are the most important navigational instruments”. Jeff Platz received a grant from the city of Münster, Germany for Werkstadt Tage, a multimedia arts festival. Platz collaborated with visual artists to present a musical score for live improvisation featuring German bassist Meinrad Kneer and veteran jazz drummer Bill Elgart.
In May of 2010 Jeff released his quartet CD “Panoramic” featuring New York City legend Daniel Carter on reeds and trumpet. Free Jazz.com writes, “The ensemble is a wonderful example of cohesive playing and total sound, full of lyricism”. In a recent live review Downbeat magazine said “Platz's group was truly amazing, on fire!” Jeff has been working in Italy with ensembles featuring bassist Sylvia Bolognese, multi reeds player Achille Succi, pianist Giancarlo Tossani and alto saxophonist Fabio Delvò. Platz has recorded for a variety of jazz music labels including Skycap Records, Evil Rabbit, Konnex, Glitch, and Setola di Maiale records. In 2015 Jeff performed solo electric guitar improvisations in collaboration with choreographers Janet Aisawa and Beth Soll in the Spring Forward dance festival in New York City.
https://www.jeffplatz.com/

Kriton Beyer is a Greek-German musician and composer, who – as a performer and improviser – mainly works with the harmonium and the daxophone. He studied musicology in Greece where he collaborated with a variety of local music groups as well as musicians like Sakis Papadimitriou and Floros Floridis.
In 2004 he moved to Berlin, where he got heavily involved in the improvised music scene of the city.
Since then, he has worked with many musicians like Phil Minton, Kalle Kalima, Axel Dörner, Kresten Osgood, Tristan Honsinger, Tomomi Adachi, Richard Scott, Willi Kellers, Matthias Bauer, Antonis Anissegos, Olaf Rupp, Els Vandeweyer, Harri Sjöström, Nicola Hein and Liz Allbee, dancers like Yuko Kaseki and visual artists like Akiko Nakayama. Kriton Beyer is a member of the electroacoustic trio “uproot”, the ensembles “Redox Reaction”, “AEAEA” and the “Berlin Soundpainting Orchestra”.
In his work with the harmonium, Kriton Beyer uses both the natural sound of his instrument and “traditional” playing techniques as well as preparations, objects and extended techniques, while his daxophone play is characterized by a very personal musical and sonic aesthetic, and an unconventional technique, sometimes also supported by the subtle use of electronics. As an improvising musician, he has performed throughout Europe. His compositions are usually characterized by conceptualism.
Kriton Beyer has also conceived and commissioned the music software CinePrompt®, which was specially developed for the use for live musical performance and live recording to films.
He also curates and manages the concert series and record label “The Procrustean Bed”, dedicated to Experimental Improvised Music.
www.kritonbeyer.com

Meinrad Kneer is a double bass player, composer, improviser, band-leader and label owner. His music moves along the musical boundaries of jazz, improvised, contemporary-composed and ethnic music.
He studied double bass and music in the Netherlands (conservatories of Hilversum and Amsterdam), where he quickly entered the Dutch jazz- and subsequently the international scene of free improvisation.
In 2002 he receives one of the most prestigious Dutch music awards: the ‚Jur Naessens Music Award‘ for the project ‚New Anatomy‘, realized with his band ‚Dalgoo‘ and inspired by the work of the Russian writer Daniil Kharms.
His compositional work has been supported between 2001-2011 by the Dutch ‚Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst‘ (today ‚Fonds Podiumkunsten‘) and in 2013 he recieved a grant from the Berlin senate to compose music for his Phosphoros Ensemble. In 2020, 2021 and 2022 he won solo stipendia from the Berlin Senate and Musikfonds.
From 2007 to 2011 he organized the concert series ‚U-Ex(perimental)‘ devoted to free improvisation, in cooperation with flutist Mark Alban Lotz, the Centraal Museum and the SJU Jazz Podium in Utrecht (NL).
Since 2011/2012 he lives in Berlin.
He currently leads the Meinrad Kneer Quintet, the Trio Baars / Kneer / Elgart, the Phosphoros Ensemble, and works as a co-leader in the groups Dalgoo, Rose/ Kneer/ Barrett and Sequoia.
He also plays a.o. with the following ensembles: Julie Sassoon Quartet, Andreas Willers Septet, Rupp/ Kneer/ Fischerlehner, Büyükberber/ Kneer/ Dimitriadis, Massaria/ Kneer/ Hertenstein and Bite the Gnatze, and worked with musicians as Najma Akhtar, Richard Barrett, Johannes Bauer, Han Bennink, Iva Bittová, Axel Dörner, Bill Elgart, Ceylan Ertem, Fred Frith, Tristan Honsinger, Paul Lovens, Roscoe Mitchell and Jon Rose, and ensembles as different Baraná formations, the Ab Baars Quartet, House of Mirrors, the Gravitones, Play Station 6, the Astronotes, the Joost Buis tentet, the AXYZ-Ensemble, the bigtet Tetzepi, the Ig Henneman String Quartet, the Marc Sinan Company, the KNM Ensemble and realized, with his own bands and as a side man, about 40 records.
During the last years he has been touring extensively in most countries of Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, North Africa and Mexico.
His internationally renowned label Evil Rabbit Records is dedicated to contemporary improvised music rooted in the European culture.
https://meinradkneer.eu/

Christian Marien is a German drummer working in the fields of jazz and improvised music. He studied music in Amsterdam and Berlin where he resides since 2000. In 2022 he founded the „Christian Marien Quartett”. He is also co-leading various collaborative projects including Superimpose (Matthias Müller), Cranes (Eve Risser, Matthias Müller), The Astronomical Unit (Clayton Thomas, Matthias Müller) and I Am Three (Silke Eberhard, Nikolaus Neuser). The ensemble „Ritsche, Zast & Marien” combines music and painting. In 2022 Christian released his first Solo CD on his own label „MarMade Records”. Also, he is a regular member of numerous ensembles such as Insomnia Brass Band, Dalgoo, Brom and Derek plays Eric. He frequently shares the stage with such renowned musicians as Frank Gratkowski, Maggie Nicols, Matthias Schubert, Sofia Jernberg, Achim Kaufmann, Tobias Delius, Theo Jörgensmann, Liz Kosack, Jim Denley, Nate Wooley, Sabir Mateen, Gebhard Ullmann and John Butcher.
Hannes Schweiger writes about Christian Marien in freiStil magazine: „He is a jack-of-all-trades in many rhythmic alleys of the jazz district and its advanced, improvisation-savvy neighborhood. With a remarkable creative reservoir that also marks him out as one of the busiest players in Berlin’s improv scene, and with an equally remarkable international reach, he is batting his way through musical ground plans.“
https://www.christianmarien.de/

PLATZ // BEYER // KNEER // MARIEN

Jeff Platz, electric guitar
Kriton Beyer, daxophone
Meinrad Kneer, double bass
Christian Marien, drums