Aki Takase
was born in Osaka and grew up in Tokyo. She received piano lessons from the age of three. Piano was also the major subject during her music studies at Tohogakuen University in Tokyo. A longer stay in the USA followed in 1979. In 1981, at the Berlin Jazz Festival in the Philharmonie, the first celebrated performance of her trio with Takeo Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Ino in Germany. Numerous concerts and recordings with Dave Liebman, Sheila Jordan, Cecil McBee, Lester Bowie, Bob Moses, Joe Henderson, Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen and many others. followed.

In the 1990s, they had very successful duos with the singer MARIA JOAO and the saxophonist DAVID MURRAY. Work in a trio with REGGIE WORKMANN and RASHIED ALI, in a duo with ALEX VON SCHLIPPENBACH, as well as occasional projects with the TOKI STREICHQUARTET and the BERLIN CONTEMPORARY JAZZ ORCHESTRA. Currently, especially her collaboration with the bass clarinetist RUDI MAHALL and with the poet YOKO TAWADA, each in a duo, as well as her trio DEMPA (with Aleks Kolkowski and Tony Buck). Aki Takase received UDJ record awards in 1990 (Play Ballads of Duke Ellington), 1991 (Shima Shoka), 1994 (Blue Monk) and 1998 (Duet for Eric Dolphy). From 1997 to 1999 she worked as a visiting professor at the “Hanns Eisler” University of Music in Berlin. In 1999 she received the Berliner Zeitung's Critics' Prize. Aki Takase received the SWR Jazz Prize in 2002. For her release “Aki Takase plays Fats Waller” she was awarded the German Record Critics' Annual Prize for the best jazz production in 2004. Other projects include the trio LOK 03 with Alex von Schlippenbach and DJ Illvibe, duos with Lauren Newton, Silke Eberhard (Ornette Coleman Anthologie), Han Bennink and Louis Sclavis. She has so far received 8 nominations for the German Record Critics' Quarterly Award. In November 2021, Aki Takase was awarded the prestigious Albert Mangelsdorff Prize at the Berlin Jazz Festival.

Daniel Erdmann
was born in Wolfsburg in 1973. He has been playing the saxophone since 1983 and studied with Gebhard Ullmann at the Hanns Eisler University of Music, among others. He recorded albums for various labels, including BMC, ENJA, ACT, LABEL BLEU, INTAKT and plays concerts worldwide with bands and musicians such as Das Kapital, Vincent Courtois, Aki Takase, Carlos Bica, Heinz Sauer, Samuel Rohrer, Henri Texier. In 2014 he founded the German-French company DAS ATELIER and his new band Daniel Erdmann's Velvet Revolution with Théo Ceccaldi and Jim Hart. The band's first album on BMC Records was awarded the German Record Critics' Annual Prize and an Echo Jazz. In autumn 2020, Daniel Erdmann was awarded the renowned SWR Jazz Prize as part of the Enjoy Jazz Festival. In June 2021 he will be the winner of the inaugural German Jazz Prize.