The four Berlin musicians have given the combination of bass clarinet, trumpet, bass, and percussions a live try in all possible kinds of ways over the course of many years. For more than two decades, Die Untäuschung have absorbed an incredible amount of jazz history and put it into a lively performance process – musical lava, so to speak, formed by a working band still able to surprise themselves.
This band knows no yesterday and no tomorrow. Die Enttäuschung are more typical of Berlin than Berlin itself and beyond that, they are unmatched in almost every respect. Collective improvisations beyond all conventions unfold the true potential of their musical imagination and bring up the blood pressure.
A sense of decency is challenged with shameless jokes, while the very next moment an expression of sacred seriousness spreads over the musicians’ faces. And yet this band displays everything that makes jazz great. Their music is bursting with energy, everything seems to be impromptu, emanating from the present, and inspired to the roots. Generally unplugged and without any technical props.
The gentlemen Dörner, Mahall, Roder, and Griener – each for themselves a chapter of German jazz and improvisational music – draw deeply from history and sweep aside the rules of art in a virtuoso and sly (or slyly virtuosic) manner. Already legendary: their reinterpretation of all of Thelonious Monk’s compositions which Die Enttäuschung recorded with master Alexander von Schlippenbach on three CDs (Monks Casino, Intakt 2005).
Unfaltering, intense, strange, and enthusiastic, a masterpiece either way.
And the day has been saved.

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