Since the 1990s the four musicians have been working through all the possible combinations of bass clarinet, trumpet, double bass and drums. Working with Alexander von Schlippenbach they achieved a coup: Monk’s entire oeuvre presented as a live concert throughout one evening and documented in a three-CD box set.
The traditional music is played anew, and the traditional is reflected in the new. This is the way jazz always developed, through minute shifts suddenly manifesting themselves as huge breaks with tradition – at least to people who were not following its history. Die Enttäuschung have absorbed an unbelievable amount of jazz history and transferred it into a living musical process, musical lava, formed by aworking band who are still able to surprise themselves, unfurling the full potential of their musical imagination with the new album Vier Halbe.

In the nineties, the quartet Die Enttäuschung [The Disappointment] released their first record solely with pieces by Thelonius Monk. Die Enttäuschung managed the feat of radically remaining faithful to Monk and staying in close touch with the originals, and yet placing them on their heads. The four from Berlin celebrated a great success several years later with the recordings of the entire works of Monk on the 3-CD Intakt box with the pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. The media has reacted euphorically to „Monk’s Casino“ (Intakt 3CD-Box 100).

Now Rudi Mahall, Axel Dörner, Jan Roder and Uli Jennessen have released a CD with 17 of their own compositions. „This band knows no borders between yesterday and tomorrow“ writes the German magazine Jazzzeitung about the quartet. „Die Enttäuschung is more Berlin than Berlin itself and, moreover, unparalleled in nearly every respect. Collective improvisations beyond convention will drive up your blood pressure and fantastic solos take away your breath.“ Or it is, as the music journalist Felix Klopotek (Spex) sees the music from Die Enttäuschung, „concentrated intensity. Exactly that what one wants to hear from jazz today.“