Melt Trio - MuHo Inaugural Concert

Bernhard Meyer has held a professorship for electric bass at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts since the summer semester of 2022. For his part, Meyer, born in 1983, studied at the Jazz Institute Berlin, where he earned a master's degree in composition with John Hollenbeck. Since his youth, he has pursued joint projects with his brother, guitarist Peter Meyer. For his inaugural concert, Meyer brings his fabulous Melt Trio to the Alte Feuerwache. He could just as easily have brought the quartet Other Animal (with Wanja Slavin and Jim Black and brother Peter), his quintet Murmuration (with Claudio Puntin and Andy Haberl, among others), but the Melt Trio, which has been around since 2010, is perhaps also a statement in the direction of expanding the sound palette of the jazz studies program. Somewhat helplessly, critics have attempted to characterize the original soundscapes of the conventionally supremely cast but unconventionally operating trio with terms like power trio or post prog rock fusion. Some might have thought of a jazzy version of King Crimson or of Pink Floyd with an extra portion of improvisation, but none of these offers hits the mark. Melt operates as a compact unit, largely eschewing virtuosic solos and literally melding a multitude of ideas into a meandering, shimmering stream of sounds that constantly shifts foreground and background. The Melt Trio plays collectively in the sense that Tortoise or A.R.Kane once gave post-rock a face. Here is not fused, but designed. If you consider that the band is connected to the scene around The Notwist in the shape of Andy Haberl (Meyer), Johannes Enders (Baumgärtner) and the band Saroos (Baumgärtner), this fits into the picture as well as the fact that on the live album "Instants" (2019) the live sampling artist Jan Bang was part of the party. An inaugural concert from outer space!