Felix Hauptmann is a German, Cologne-based pianist, composer, and educator (he teaches jazz piano at the University of Music Saar in Saarbrücken). He has led the acoustic modern jazz Percussion trio with double bass player Roger Kintopf and drummer Leif Berger since 2020, and III, obviously, is the third album of this trio (following I and II, released by Boomslang, 2022 and 2023), recorded at the trio’s second home, the LOFT in Cologne, in April 2026.

Percussion has developed a profound, collective aesthetic based on an intense period of rehearsing and touring that allows it to develop its complex rhythmic structures. III perfectly distills Percussion’s free approach to time, using skeletal compositional ideas and thoughtful Economic gestures as a gateway to challenging free improvisations. These refined, detailed yet uncompromising and dense pieces are open to negotiating every aspect of the trio’s dynamics in a telepathic, deeply organic and empathetic interplay.

III offers eight new compositions that explore the stimulating tension between discipline and freedom, and vulnerability and playfulness. The trio is not shy of experimenting with abstract textures, and keeps searching for new enigmatic, sometimes even cryptic ones. But it always does so in wise ways to express the joy and even acceptance of new, uncharted sonic territories that defy and resist familiar conventions of how a modern jazz piano trio operates and sounds.

Hauptmann hopes that III would restore some serenity to a world to a world that went upside down. Percussion does so in a highly poetic and compassionate way.

As the world is getting progressively derailed, I hope that this album offers some serenity and a place to experience time differently.

Eyal Hareuveni

Felix Hauptmann (piano), Roger Kintopf (double bass), Leif Berger (drums)