Indie Boulevard - "Confluence" album interview

Jung Stratmann Quartet has released Confluence — an album featuring New York scene legends Steve Cardenas and Marco Djordjevic. Korean pianist Sujae Jung and German bassist Wolf Stratmann, in conversation with Indie Boulevard, explain how academic education coexists with spontaneity and why nature becomes a language for describing urban chaos.

Jazz education is always a game of balance: too much theory kills intuition, too little leaves a musician without tools for dialogue. Jung & Stratmann went through conservatories in The Hague and New York to ultimately create Confluence — an album where academic training and living energy don’t contradict each other but exist in a strange, almost symbiotic connection. The recording was done live before an audience, with no retakes allowed — a decision that says much about the quartet’s priorities. The studio brought together musicians from four countries with different pedagogical systems behind them. How do they find common ground? And what happens when a composition written for a duet suddenly grows to include guitar and drums — does it get diluted or, conversely, reveal what was always hidden?

In the conversation, we discuss how understanding of a partner’s music changes over years of working together, why trees and whales become metaphors for describing the expat experience in a metropolis, and how two musicians from Busan and Bielefeld attempt to compensate for the absence of nature in Manhattan’s concrete jungle. This is a conversation about the collision of worlds — academic and intuitive, urban and natural, student and professional — and about what emerges at the point of their intersection.

Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. You and Sujae met at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, then both continued your studies at The New School in New York. Over these years, you’ve evolved from a student duo to a quartet featuring legends like Steve Cardenas and Marko Djordjević. It’s interesting how many great jazz collaborations begin in academic settings but then get lost in the hustle of professional life. For you two, it’s the opposite—the partnership only deepens. Tell me, how has your musical understanding of each other changed since you first sat down to play together? What do you hear in each other now that you didn’t hear then?  

Wolf: Hey, thank you! It is a pleasure for us, and we are grateful for being interviewed by you and the Indie Boulevard! Those are great questions to start with! 

Sujae: Yes, they bring back some good old memories! Remember, Wolf, when you asked me to practise with you together for the first time after our first ensemble lesson back in fall 2019? Our teacher, Miro Herak, made us practice an F-Blues and mess around with rhythmical kicks, cross rhythms, and even shortening and lengthening the form. (Laughs) We couldn’t do any of it at first, but we kept on trying regardless until we managed that night in that room without a window in the old conservatory building. I was so tired afterwards, haha, but it was also so much fun!

Wolf: Ha, yes! As usual, you had it all down way before me and then helped me the rest of those hours patiently until I finally managed too! Haha

Sujae: I think that’s really a big one, after so much time of studying, practicing, playing, composing and working together, to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses so well. So we can really help each other out now, not only to make up for each other’s weaknesses but really make the other person shine and bring out the best in them. 

Wolf: I agree. After all that, that is what this music is all about for us, the players, and who they truly are. 

You recorded Confluence live in front of a select audience at Second Take Sound Studio. That’s a bold decision, considering the complexity of your material. What’s more important to you, technical perfection or that irreplicable energy that only emerges in the presence of people? And did you feel pressure knowing there wouldn’t be a second take? 

Sujae: I would definitely go for the energy. Sure, you wish sometimes that you would like to have a second take on things, but then sometimes it gets too fuzzy anyway. Jazz for us has always been about community and connection in the first place. And in a concert, it’s almost like an exchange. You give something from yourself, you send it out while playing, and then you receive something back from the audience, of course. It’s much in a way like a shared process in which you might even learn something about the others and yourself. 

Wolf: Totally! And even though we spend countless hours in the practice room, days and nights on end, in fact, honing our skills, all that matters is the very moment of the performance, it all comes down to. No matter how much you try to be perfect, the beauty of improvised music is that in the moment, it never goes as planned; everything is different from what you expected it to be. It’s just human, one day you feel like this, the next day like this. It doesn’t make sense to pretend that it’s different; otherwise, the conversation is not honest and might get very boring very quickly. 

“Tree Huggers” exists in two versions—as a duo and as a quartet. You say you almost cried listening to the quartet version because each musician’s personality comes through so strongly and swirls together so gracefully. It makes you think about the nature of arrangement: sometimes adding instruments dilutes the original idea, and sometimes it reveals what was always hidden there. Sujae, when you wrote this piece, did you anticipate it would ever become a quartet piece? And what specifically changed in its emotional message when guitar and drums joined your dialogue?  

Sujae: Most of the time when writing music, I try to have the players in mind that I want to play it with. Because all instruments sound so different depending on who plays them. With “Tree Huggers,” I was probably in one of those phases again, listening a lot to Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet Records with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielson, and Jon Christensen. Wolf knows that music very well too, so with him, it’s easy going for that vibe. And then with Steve and Marko, it was so easy again because they totally understood where this piece was coming from. I think that’s why Wolf cried a little when listening back to our record, because he was so happy hearing that joy, liveliness, almost childlike bliss coming from the four of us playing together and letting it out. 

You describe this album as an example of what “passing the torch” can look like in jazz. You’re playing with musicians who were your teachers at The New School— Satoshi Takeishi and Ned Rothenberg—but now you’re colleagues on stage, recording an album of your original compositions. Did something change in your relationship to them as musicians when the recording studio equalized you? And at what moment did you feel the transition from student to colleague was finally complete?

Wolf: To be very honest, I think this possibility of playing together happened initially because Steve and Marko never implied any hierarchy between us ever.  I think it’s like one of our former teachers, Saxophonist David Glasser said once: “We are all on the same way, man. I’m just a little further down the road than you, standing there with a flashlight, lighting you the way.” Steve and Marko have shared the stage and life experiences with some of Sujae’s and my most favourite artists, some of which were undoubtedly integral to our artistic development. In the moment of performance, all these influences and experiences whirl together. It’s hard to put into words; it’s like something you can only really experience by playing or really deeply listening to one another. It’s like their influences shine through in their playing, and that influences and inspires us, their energy, their ideas, intentions, stories, and feelings. 

Confluence described as nature-inspired—trees, whales, sunsets. But there’s something interesting happening here: you’re using the language of the natural world to describe deeply urban experiences of migration, displacement, and the pull of cities like New York. It feels like a kind of code-switching between the pastoral and the cosmopolitan. Is nature for you a way to process the chaos of being an expat musician in New York? Or is it something else entirely—maybe a way to stay connected to your roots while living this transatlantic jazz life? 

Sujae: Yes, absolutely. We both come from cities where vast nature is really easily accessible. Busan in Korea, Bielefeld in Germany, and of course, where I met in The Hague, there is the North Sea just a short bike ride away from you, as well as that wonderful dune area, the nature reserve, Meijendel. New York is very intense in a way, everything here is artificial. A concrete jungle. You can not get anywhere without looking at commercials and ads. Nature here is optional to a large degree. Sure, you have Central Park or Prospect, but it takes an hour or even longer for us sometimes to get to those places, and then it’s never really quiet. To Upstate New York it takes even more than two hours sometimes. I feel like we have a kind a longing on one hand, which we try to compensate for with creating music that is inspired by nature, and on the other hand, we live and work in a metropolis that sustains our art. It’s this duality of our lives that sometimes cannot be merged, but then again, maybe they do live in symbiosis with one another. 

You both received a Living Jazz “Jazz Camp West” scholarship in 2024, and you received the Dean’s Award at The New School for outstanding academic achievement. Academic recognition in jazz is a double-edged thing: on one hand, it’s validation; on the other, jazz has always been the music of outsiders, rebels, people who didn’t fit into institutional frameworks. Your education started with audio design and music production in Berlin, then jazz in The Hague, then New York. How do you merge the academic approach to composition with that raw, intuitive impulse without which jazz loses its soul? Does it ever seem to you that education can “over-teach” spontaneity?

Wolf: I might have had my moments where I have fought a bit internally with some academic systems that institutions have in place sometimes. But I would say in the end, I feel extremely grateful and privileged for the support I have received from the institutions where I was able to study. Although many of my past years were extremely challenging, these institutions really nurtured me to become the musician I am today. Studying music is also never just a plain study where you hang your head in the books and disappear into dry theory. It’s always like a dual degree kind of thing. You are working out stuff with people all the time, and then this takes you very quickly to opportunities outside of the Institution. It’s like music school is like a hub, a vast storage facility of invaluable quantities of information and resources, were you meet and make new friends, assemble tools, maybe get your butt kicked once or twice in a while gently by some of the professors, but then you got to take it all out to the gig, apply it and get on from there. 

Confluence brings together musicians from Korea, Germany, the US, and Serbia—different generations and jazz traditions. But I’m curious about the practical reality of this internationalism. When you’re in a studio with musicians who were trained in different pedagogical systems, who listened to different records growing up, who have different cultural relationships to silence, space, dynamics—how do you find a common language? Is there a moment in rehearsal where you realize you’re not speaking the same musical dialect, and how do you bridge that?

Sujae: That is a great question, and I might be able to answer this with a metaphor, one of our former teachers, Saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, once said so humorously: “It’s like as if we all stand around a chair in a circle. We all look at the chair from a different angle, and so each one of us talks about what we see from a different perspective. But in the end, we all talk about the same darn old thing. A chair.” 

The album was mixed and mastered by Ken Rich at Grand Street Recording in Brooklyn. There’s been this ongoing tension in jazz between the “purity” of live, unprocessed sound and the possibilities of studio craft. Some purists say that too much mixing ruins the authenticity of jazz; others argue that’s a dated, fetishistic view. Where do you stand?

Wolf: We recorded all in one room, so naturally, there was quite some spill on all tracks. Jason Rostkowski did a great job in making the best out of the recording situation, but some of the bleeding is just unavoidable. Ken Rich then helped fantastically to clean up those tracks. For us, the mixing and mastering was about getting clarity to each instrument’s track, so that everyone’s ideas and playing can be heard and enjoyed well for the listener on any sound system they use. And that is really a must, in my opinion. 

New York has changed dramatically in recent years. The jazz scene that drew you and Sujae there—the late-night sessions, the abundance of venues, the sense that you could stumble into genius on any given Tuesday—many say that’s fading or gone. Rents have pushed musicians out, venues have closed, the pandemic changed everything. Do you still feel that pull to New York as strongly as when you first arrived? Or are you and Sujae part of a generation that’s having to reimagine what a jazz career looks like when the traditional ecosystem is collapsing?

Wolf: That is a great question and a very timely one as well. In fact, we are leaving the States this December to first visit family in Korea and do a few months of study about Korean Traditional Music there, and then move to Germany for an indefinite time. Partially family reasons, but also political and economic ones, have brought us to this decision. 

Sujae: Yes. We came to New York solely for the art scene, and I have to say we really found what we were looking for. For us, it still was an abundance of venues and a time filled with opportunity, so much that you sometimes had trouble keeping it all together. 

Wolf: I get that point, that New York is changing drastically. But that is actually a large city’s constant: Change. The beauty is that people and cultures from all over the world stream in and out of the city for whatever reasons they may have for doing so. To be in that stream, that’s what it is about in the end. You might get swept away, but you’re certainly in for a ride! Haha 

Sujae: In many ways, though, it is extremely tough as a foreign artist to sustain a living here. We have friends hustling multiple jobs and sacrificing their health to be part of it, just to have enough money to barely get by. In some cases, there is not much time left in a week to work on your own art. And that’s crucial, because you can twist and turn it however you want it, but in the end, as an artist, you need time to figure out what and how you want to create. 

Wolf: Possibly, any generation has to reimagine a bit what the best way is now to have their music sustain them. But that is not necessarily tied to New York. It’s everywhere on our planet like that. In some places, however, the starting conditions might be a bit better than in others, and those impressions may vary from person to person as well, depending on their personal values.  

Confluence out now. But jazz is ultimately about the live experience—the conversation between musicians and audience, the spontaneity that can’t be bottled. What are your plans for bringing this music to audiences in the flesh?

Wolf: Since we are leaving New York and we wanted to keep next year as open as possible for us to have enough room and time to decide where and how we want to start the next chapter in our lives, we have one concert this formation, scheduled. The album release concert.

Sujae: December 3rd, 7 pm at Ki Smith Gallery in Manhattan, New York! 

New York, 170 Forsyth St, New York, NY 10002, USA

You can also find it here:https://www.kismithgallery.com/event-details/jung-stratmann-quartet-confluence-album-release-feat-steve-cardenas-marko-djordjevic

And in general, you can find out about all our other concert dates on our websites: https://www.sujaejungmusic.com, https://www.wolfrobertstratmann.com, and our Instagrams: @wolfrobertstratmann, @sujaejung_pi

- Anita Floa, Indie Boulevard US

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Indie Boulevard - "Confluence" album review

Jung Stratmann Quartet Finally Recorded What They’ve Been Playing for Years: In-Depth Review of the New Album.

When Sujae Jung and Wolf Robert Stratmann were studying at The New School in Manhattan, they were hardly thinking about creating an album that would, years later, force a reconsideration of the boundaries of quartet jazz. The Korean pianist and German bassist first played as a duo, then expanded to a quartet, inviting guitarist Steve Cardenas (the very same one who spent years with Paul Motian) and Serbian drummer Marko Djordjevic. Confluence was recorded as a reimagining of five compositions that existed in other formats. The musicians took old material and broke it down to molecules, reassembling it in a configuration where improvisation has consumed composition so thoroughly that distinguishing between them is impossible.

New York jazz is currently in a strange state. On one hand, young musicians on the Brooklyn scene are furiously returning to the spiritual jazz of the seventies, recording long meditative sets with saxophones and African percussion. On the other hand, there’s the academic milieu, graduates of prestigious schools, virtuosos playing the most complex meters and harmonies, but often cold, sterile. Jung Stratmann Quartet falls into the gap between these camps. They’re reflective enough for the academics, but too free for the purists. Compositionally refined enough for conservatory snobs, but too inclined toward an improvisational approach for fans of neat post-bop.

This is both their strength and their difficulty. Confluence is hard to sell to anyone with a direct pitch. This is an album for people who’ve already listened to plenty of jazz, tired of the obvious and searching for music that will work with them, not against them. Five tracks recorded in the studio with minimal intervention—you can hear breathing, the creak of pedals, the acoustics of the room. The result is technically imperfect in places, but absolutely perfect in its aliveness. Far more alive than most contemporary jazz releases, polished beyond recognition.

“Tree Huggers” opens the album with a dialogue between piano and drums, and for the first two minutes I thought this would be yet another European free jazz with pretensions of philosophizing. Jung throws clusters, Djordjevic responds with rolls on the toms, but instead of an explosion, you get dialogue. When the bass and guitar enter, the composition takes shape, Stratmann playing pedal tones here, holding down the bottom while the others wander above. Midway through, Jung takes a solo that develops through repetition of minimal motifs—Philip Glass comes to mind, filtered through a jazz prism. The track ends as it began, refusing to give you any answers.

“Summer Whale” is built on the opposition of bottom and middle—bass and piano. Harmonically, the composition hovers over several centers, like Miles‘s modal jazz, only without his melodic generosity. Cardenas enters late, his notes chosen with indecent precision. Djordjevic here refuses to be a metronome. The middle section is given to a bass solo, and when everyone gathers back together, they play an almost unison line, then scatter. The track is cyclical—ending on the same note it began with.

“This Wine Tastes Very Dry” is the most fragile piece on the album. Jung begins with chords that balance between dissonance and consonance, never definitively choosing a side. Cardenas responds with delay, his phrases mirroring the piano. Djordjevic is almost silent for the first two and a half minutes—brushes rustling so quietly they could be mistaken for air conditioning noise. When he finally makes his presence known, the playing remains crumbly, fragmented. Harmonically, there’s no form here in the conventional sense. European jazz loves these through-composed structures, where everything is written from beginning to end without repetitions.

“The Pull” changes the rules of the game. After three compositions on the edge of atonality, this one returns to traditional jazz. Djordjevic sets up a bossa nova, Stratmann plays walking bass, Jung and Cardenas lead the melody in unison—a rarity on the album. The theme is simple, major, and after the previous tracks, it’s perceived as a revelation. The most accessible track on the album.

“After Sunset” closes the album with a ballad. Jung plays solitary chords with long pauses between them. Stratmann enters arco—with bow, sounding like a cello. Djordjevic works cymbals and brushes throughout the composition, almost inaudible. The middle section is a series of short solos, each musician speaking a few phrases and falling silent. The track concludes with a gradual fade—instruments drop out one by one, leaving the piano with a final chord that resonates, overtones layering, slowly dissolving. The album ends with the same instrument it began with—a cyclical structure.

Comparing Confluence to something specific is difficult because the quartet stands at a crossroads of influences. Echoes of late Motian are audible—the same love of space and silence. There’s the European chamber quality of ECM aesthetics, but without its characteristic coldness.

There’s one complaint, and it’s serious—you want more. The longest composition here is just over six minutes. “Tree Huggers” could have been a fifteen-minute exploration, “This Wine Tastes Very Dry” begs for ten minutes minimum. Perhaps this was the producer’s decision—keeping tracks short to maintain attention. Perhaps the musicians themselves decided that conciseness matters more than completeness. In any case, this album is listened to in one breath, simply frozen in place.

The album demands a prepared listener. If your acquaintance with jazz is limited to Kind of Blue and Spotify playlists like “Jazz for Work,” Confluence will seem like a monster under the bed. This is jazz for people who’ve already gone through standards, bop, modal, free, and are now looking for the next step.

It’s interesting how the album will live on. Recordings that demand time and attention rarely become hits, but sometimes they accumulate an audience slowly, through word of mouth and recommendations. Confluence might become an album that people discover a year, two, five years after its release. Jung and Stratmann have built something sustainable over their years working together. Expanding to a quartet with Cardenas and Djordjevic added color and depth without losing intimacy. Four musicians from four countries (Korea, Germany, USA, Serbia) found a common language through jazz, which ceased being an American genre long ago and became an international dialect. Confluence is an album that could only have been recorded in New York, where these cultural streams meet daily on the streets, in the subway, in the clubs.

Confluence is one of the most important jazz releases of 2025, but recognition will come slowly. The album is against trends—against virality, against instant access, against easy consumption. It demands investment of time and attention, promising in return depth and longevity.

- Anita Floa, Indie Boulevard US

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Jazz Guitar Today - feature

The quartet of pianist Sujae Jung, bassist Wolf Robert Stratmann and guitarist Steve Cardenas is releasing Confluence, an EP that is filled with originals.

Pianist Sujae Jung (from South Korea) and the German bassist Wolf Robert Stratmann team up with guitarist Steve Cardenas and drummer Marko Djordjevic to perform five of Jung’s and Stratmann’s colorful originals on Confluence. While each of the musicians has their own individual sound, they blend to create a distinctive and highly appealing musical identity.

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Indie Boulevard - "This Wine Tastes Very Dry" single review

Jung Stratmann Quartet’s “This Wine Tastes Very Dry” Is an Exercise in Elegant Tension

New York has always been a place where traditions collide and reimagine themselves. Jung Stratmann Quartet embody precisely this principle of cultural métissage: Sujae Jung‘s Asian meditativeness, Wolf Stratmann’s European chamber sensibility, Steve Cardenas‘s American freedom (who spent years alongside the legendary Paul Motian), and Marco Djordjevic‘s Balkan rhythmic inventiveness coalesce into a statement that belongs to all these traditions simultaneously and to none of them individually.

The new single “This Wine Tastes Very Dry,” which was released today in anticipation of the full-length album ‘Confluence‘, works as a perfect metaphor for the sound. Dry wine—a drink without residual sugar masking its character. This composition is stripped of ornamentation, cheap emotional effects, everything that makes jazz “pleasant” for the casual listener. It’s exposed, tart, demanding your willingness to accept it on its own terms.

I returned to this track again and again over the course of weeks, trying to understand why it holds attention despite its apparent lack of conflict. The composition opens with Jung‘s piano phrases that hang in the air with that particular suspension—when harmony is about to resolve, but the musician holds the tension for another moment, and another, forcing the listener to balance on the edge of anticipation. Stratmann‘s double bass materializes almost imperceptibly, his line entering so naturally, as if it had always been sounding, you just hadn’t heard it before.

Marko Djordjevic deserves separate discussion, because his approach to drums is radically different from what generations of swing drummers have taught us. For the first two and a half minutes he exists on the periphery of the sound field—brushes rustle on the snare drum so quietly that you could mistake it for external noise, cymbals ring at the edge of perception. Djordjevic builds tension through absence, through refusing to give what’s expected, and when he finally announces himself with a full rhythmic statement at 2:30, it’s perceived as an explosion, though dynamically he remains restrained. Cardenas on guitar, though appearing only at the very end, demonstrates that particular wisdom that comes only through decades of playing with musicians who understand the value of space.

Are they even improvising? Or is all of this written and rehearsed? A good question, and there’s no answer. When musicians play together long enough, the boundary dissolves. What’s written begins to sound spontaneous, what’s improvised settles like composition. The quartet has clearly logged dozens of hours together, and it’s audible—they anticipate each other, leave space, take it back without words.

The album Confluence may become one of the important jazz statements of late 2025.

- Anita Floa, Indie Boulevard US

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Jazz Fun - JS 4tet "Confluence" album review

Zwei Stimmen, eine Vision – Confluence

Es stehen neue Werke der langjährigen koreanisch-deutschen Contemporary-Jazz-Kollegen, dem Pianisten Sujae Jung und dem Kontrabassisten Wolf Robert Stratmann, bereit. Durch die Erweiterung ihres Duos um die beiden renommierten Jazz-Ausnahmekünstler, den US-amerikanischen Gitarristen Steve Cardenas und den serbischen Schlagzeuger Marko Djordjevic, gewinnt ihre Performance an Raffinesse.

Das Album „Confluence” enthält fünf Originalkompositionen, teils Quartettversionen früherer Werke, teils völlig neue Titel, die den von der Natur inspirierten Kompositionsstil des Duos fortsetzen, aber auch ihre musikalischen Einflüsse weiter ausbauen. „Confluence” von Jung Stratmann wird am tba erscheinen. Das Zusammenspiel der internationalen, generations- und genreübergreifenden Besetzung fließt in einer bewegenden Komposition aus vier ausdrucksstarken Einheiten zusammen und verkörpert den verbindenden Geist der Jazzmusik. Es ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie „die Fackel weiterreichen“ aussehen kann. Aufgenommen wurde das Album von Jason Rostowski in einer exklusiven Live-Performance vor ausgewähltem Publikum im kürzlich eröffneten Second Take Sound Studio des Sängers, Songwriters und Dichters Reed Turchi in Manhattan, New York. Es setzt den warmen, hochauflösenden Sound des Projekts fort und fügt ihm eine authentische Live-Atmosphäre hinzu. Gemischt und gemastert von Ken Rich von Grand Street Recording in Brooklyn, New York, ist „Confluence” wirklich ein großartiges Zusammenspiel vieler.

Confluence besteht aus fünf Originaltiteln, von denen jeder ein tiefes Eintauchen in das komplexe Zusammenspiel der Musiker sowie eine Hommage an ihre engsten Inspirationsquellen ist. Das Album beginnt mit einer tiefgründigen Quartettversion von Jungs „Tree Huggers“, dem Titelsong ihrer kürzlich veröffentlichten Duo-EP. „Ich war so emotional, als ich unsere Aufnahme zum ersten Mal hörte!“, sagt Stratmann. „Es hat mich wirklich berührt, wie jede unserer Persönlichkeiten so stark zum Ausdruck kommt und sich auf so anmutige Weise miteinander vermischt!“ „Summer Whale“, eine dunkle, aber dennoch glückselige Komposition im 5/4-Takt, ist ein älteres Stück, das Jung und Stratmann gemeinsam komponiert haben und das nun endlich sein Debüt auf Platte feiert. Was als einfacher Vamp begann, um das offene Spiel im gleichmäßigen Achtel-Feeling zu erforschen und sich einen Wal vorzustellen, der durch die sonnengewärmten Wellen des Ozeans gleitet, entpuppte sich als ein Stück von tiefem emotionalem Wert. Nachdem die isländische Sängerin Björg Blöndal den Text dazu geschrieben hatte, erzählt das Stück die Geschichte eines Blauwals auf seiner jährlichen Wanderung von den kälteren zu den wärmeren Teilen des Atlantiks. Während dieser Reise kann er nicht leugnen, dass trotz all der wunderbaren Anblicke, denen er begegnet, immer wieder ein Gefühl von Heimweh aufkommt.

Auf dem Album folgt an dritter Stelle eine durchdachte Interpretation von Stratmanns „This Wine Tastes Very Dry”. Für Anhänger des Jung-Stratmann-Projekts ist es kein Geheimnis, dass Rubato einer der Lieblingsstile der beiden ist. Cardenas und Djordjevic stellen in dieser Hinsicht ihr beeindruckendes Können unter Beweis und präsentieren dem Zuhörer eine besonders weitläufige, zarte, fast ätherische Version dieser zutiefst melancholischen Ballade. Der vierte Titel, „The Pull”, ist nicht nur ein großartiger Übergang von dunklen Gefühlen zu einer helleren Stimmung, sondern auch eine doppelte Hommage an Stratmanns frühen Einfluss durch den E-Bass sowie an die Faszination, die die Musikszene in New York City auf jemanden ausüben kann. Beginnend mit einer an Jaco erinnernden Basslinie versuchen die Musiker, das freudige Gefühl einzufangen, das sich einstellt, wenn man der Anziehungskraft des Nachtlebens von New York City mit all seinen inspirierenden und meisterhaften Künstlern nicht widerstehen kann. Das Album endet mit einer Trio-Bonus-Performance von Jungs „After Sunset“, einer traumhaften Rubato-Ballade, deren transzendente Harmonien die Vorstellungskraft der Zuhörer anregen. Sie lassen einen lauen Abend in der Dämmerung mit atemberaubendem Blick auf die südkoreanische Küste vor dem inneren Auge entstehen und vermitteln das Gefühl, am Ende eines außergewöhnlichen Mehrgangmenüs ein üppiges Dessert zu genießen.

- Jacek Brun, Jazz Fun DE

 

November 2025

Blue Directions - Blues Net Radio airplay of Jung Stratmann Quartet feat. Steve Cardenas & Marko Djordjevic "Tree Huggers"

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Thierry De Clemensat JS 4tet "Confluence" album review

Across the Blue Divide: Sujae Jung and Wolf Robert Stratmann’s Transcultural Quartet. If there’s one trait that seems to bind Korean and European jazz musicians, it’s their shared classical foundation, a discipline that so often shapes the direction of their artistry. From that rigorous training, many find their way either into the open field of experimentation or toward the sculpted lyricism of melody. Pianist Sujae Jung and bassist Wolf Robert Stratmann have clearly chosen the latter path, one that privileges balance, structure, and intimacy. Their quartet, rounded out by players who listen as deeply as they play, embraces simplicity as a philosophy rather than a limitation. At its core, the group’s sound grows from contrast: between the refinement of Jung’s Korean sensibility and the earthy precision of Stratmann’s German roots. The dialogue between their musical cultures doesn’t erase difference, it heightens it. What emerges is a shared language that sounds both carefully measured and strikingly spontaneous. Every note feels deliberate; every pause, charged with intention. In this quartet, one senses a kind of telepathy, an unspoken conversation where two worlds not only meet but also expand through each other. Their new album, Confluence, unfolds across five original compositions, each one a study in collective balance and emotional depth. The record opens with a bold quartet version of Jung’s “Tree Huggers,” first introduced on the duo’s recent EP. “I was so moved when I listened back to our recording,” Stratmann recalls. “I was deeply touched by how powerfully our personalities express themselves, intertwining with such grace.” That intertwining, an elegant tension between introspection and release, sets the tone for what follows. “Summer Whale,” composed in 5/4, swims in darker waters. The piece began as a modest vamp, a space for exploring open eighth-note phrasing and the image of a whale gliding through waves warmed by the sun. But over time, it became something more, a meditation on movement and memory. Later, Icelandic singer Björg Blöndal added lyrics (not featured here) about a blue whale migrating from cold to warm Atlantic waters, transforming the tune into a metaphor for passage and transformation. Water runs deep through Confluence, not just as imagery, but as an organizing principle. It evokes both the vastness separating Korea and Germany and the current that now unites them. This music lives in that tension: a paradoxical distortion where familiar sounds bend into something unfamiliar, and where dissonance becomes a form of beauty. The musicians exchange calls and responses, gazes and gestures, until their individual perspectives merge into what might be called a sensory identity, an aspiration toward universality through the specificity of shared sound. That same spirit animates “The Pull,” a composition that leads the listener from darkness into light. Stratmann tips his hat to his early years on electric bass, and to the hypnotic gravity of New York’s music scene, a city that still exerts a magnetic influence over his playing. By the time the record reaches its closing piece, “After Sunset,” the quartet has fully arrived at its destination. Here, the music breathes in total trust. There is no need for glances or cues; the musicians simply are, coexisting, conversing, creating. The track feels like an arrival not just for the group but for the idea of musical collaboration across cultural boundaries. Few ensembles achieve this kind of synthesis. One is reminded of Joe Zawinul’s Syndicate, which followed the legendary Weather Report. Admired for its diversity yet never quite reaching its predecessor’s acclaim, Zawinul’s later group may have been misunderstood, too forward, too fluid for easy classification. Yet where the Syndicate struggled against the weight of legacy, Jung and Stratmann’s quartet carries no such burden. They are building something patient and deliberate, letting the sound find its own shape. Confluence is, in that sense, aptly titled. It’s less a finished statement than an evolving process, a meeting point where geography dissolves and what remains is pure sound, pure exchange. For Jung and Stratmann, the music isn’t about bridging differences; it’s about inhabiting them, letting their currents mingle until the distinction between origin and destination becomes beautifully, deliberately blurred.

- Thierry De Clemensat, Paris Move

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Jonathan Widran - JS 4tet"Confluence" album review

The soulful, rhythmic and impressionistic moods on Confluence, the compelling, richly exploratory debut EP by the Jung Stratmann Quartet, is rooted in and is an impressive, continuously shape-shifting outgrowth of the improvisational blend of drums and bass, lo-fi and electronic styles South Koren pianist Sujae Jung and German bassist Wolf Robert Stratmann create in their improv ensemble Airplane Ears. Truly an offbeat, freewheeling international jazz affair, the duo expands its artistry tremendously via its intuitive vibing with American guitarist Steve Cardenas and Serbian drummer Marko Djordjevic. To fully appreciate the uniqueness of the quartet, listeners should compare the versions of the collection’s anchor/bookend pieces “Tree Hugger” and “After Sunset” with the renditions Jung and Stratmann recorded as a duo earlier in 2025 on their Tree Huggers EP. The quartet transforms “Tree Huggers” from something of a darker introspective ballad to a higher energy, swinging and polyrhythmic romp highlighted by Cardenas’ tasteful soloing and Djordjevic’s hypnotic percussive fire. “After Sunset” is still a haunting ballad, but the quartet arrangement offers a more dramatic, dare we say cinematic flair based on Djordjevic’s adventurous drumming and hi-hat bravura. The EP also shines a spotlight on Jung and Stratmann’s unique storytelling skills as they create a fascinating, ever-evolving migratory journey of a blue whale (“Summer Whale”) and a cheerful, bustling paean to NYC (“The Pull”). The EP also includes “The Wine Tastes Very Dry,” a gently meditative late night piece with a wry sense of humor.

- Jonathan Widran, The JW Vibe

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Jazz Journal UK - New Releases

They say : Jung Stratmann Quartet Confluence (Jung Stratmann) Street Date:December 3, 2025. The quartet of pianist Sujae Jung and bassist Wolf Robert Stratmann is releasing Confluence, an EP that is filled with picturesque originals that feature an attractive group sound. Its five selections range from a cinematic depiction of a whale’s journey to a tribute to the New York City music scene. (Jung Stratmann)

 

October 2025

Cadance Jazz World - album preview

Jung Stratmann Quartet’s upcoming album Confluence continues the Jung’s and Stratmann’s nature-inspired writing style, but also reaches out further to their musical influences. A heartfelt interplay of not only international and generation-spanning, but also genre-transcending personnel flows together in an evocative composition of four expressive entities, embracing the unifying spirit of jazz music and setting an example of what “passing the torch” can look like.​ 

 

Mid 2025

Jazz Promo Services - "Confluence" release album page (US)

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June 15 2025

Interview with Neon Jazz - Kansas City, on the new Jung Stratmann Duo "Tree Huggers" EP. 

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May 2025 

Jung Stratmann Duo "Tree Huggers" EP release

The Korean-German Contemporary Jazz Duo Jung Stratmann presents their second EP, “Tree Huggers,” a collection of four original compositions exploring themes of nature and memory. Recorded at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studios, this EP showcases the unique interplay between pianist Sujae Jung and double bassist Wolf Robert Stratmann, offering a warm, high-fidelity sound that builds upon their debut EP, “Bird of Luck”. The duo’s intuitive musical conversation flows like a slowly rolling river, with their virtuosic abilities taking a backseat to the emotive and sincere quality of their performances. “Tree Huggers” features four distinct tracks that highlight the duo’s musical journey. The opening track, “After Sunset,” demonstrates their characteristic rubato phrasing and creative harmonic interplay. The title track draws inspiration from 1970s modern jazz while addressing environmental themes. “Green Waters” showcases Stratmann’s innovative phasing technique on the bass, creating an auditory image of forest streams. The EP concludes with “Only In Your Memory,” a folk-inspired piece that unexpectedly features Stratmann as a vocalist, adding an intimate layer of depth to the overall atmosphere. Throughout the EP, Jung and Stratmann’s ability to create space for each other allows the music to unfold naturally, moving between various registers, dynamics, and moods while maintaining a sense of intentionality and clarity.

Jan Fritz, Jazz Media & More

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Early 2025 

Jazz Media & More Artist Page (EU)

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