Trio Bravo has been inspiring its audience for more than 15 years. The band travels around the world performing concerts, scorings of silent movies and stage shows. Trio Bravo+ confidently ignores the pigeon holes and labels so common in the music business and leaves it up to the music itself to be its own trademark.

Trio Bravo+ remains of classical origin: violin, piano, double bass, marimba and percussion. What appears to be quiet chamber music is actually a cross over project pushing the limits and performed by four exceptional artists from four countries. Mark Chaet, the head and composer of Trio Bravo+ broke up the categorization of musical styles. His compositions range from soundtrack to classical composition, from tradition to modernism using a structure borrowed from pop music with occasional influences of folk elements. Music, rich in a colourful imagery and eccentric sound paintings. And this is not at all quiet!

„They perform as completely persuasive cosmopolitans in terms of music, a demanding, ambitious dissolution and cancellation of borders and styles...“

The career of Trio Bravo+ founder Marc Chaet has never been without its obstacles and setbacks. But none of them has kept him from looking into the future: His first music teacher diagnosed him with a bad sense of hearing, and yet Chaet would turn into a virtuoso violinist and composer. The authorities considered him a political risk, but the perestroika reversed his exclusion from college. Today, Chaet has gauged the entire spectrum of his talents on a total of eight studio full-lengths, vivid concert recordings and soundtracks. Fifteen years after founding Trio Bravo+, it is finally time for a retrospective – although, as was to be expected, Plus has turned out anything but a conventional compilation. On the one hand, Plus makes a point of returning to the roots of the ensemble. Even some of their most ardent followers may not be aware that, in their early years, Trio Bravo+ were still playing on the streets and in small bars, its members having only just arrived in Germany from the Ukraine. Balkan and Klezmer constituted the stylistic pillars of these performances, which would gradually be expanded by the telepathic interactivity of chamber music and the rhythmical drive of rock. On the other hand, the album also contains brand-new tracks as well as re-recordings of some of their „classics“. The result is testimony to the remarkably wide range of their expressivity: While tracks like „Darf ich bitten“ or „Liebesleid“ emphasise their romantic, bittersweet and delicate side, „Montag“ or „Rondo Ukraine“ develop from hypnotic piano- and drum-grooves on top of which Chaet's violin rises to blissful flights. „Wolga-Flüsschen“, meanwhile, a remaster from the ensemble's debut „Auf dem Weg“, closes the album on a note of wistful memories.

The album also contains the final recordings of the Trio Bravo+ with Sergej Sweschinskij on double bass and Adam Tomaszewski on percussion. The dissolution of this classic line-up this year marked the end of a fruitful chapter for Chaet, who then decided to take the ensemble into a different direction. By working with an entirely new group and a provocative program called „Chamber music reloaded“, he has infused some of his older songs with an entirely contemporary urgency. Which only proves that the more things change, the more they stay the same: Plus may see Mark Chaet reminiscing about the past, but his gaze is still pointed straight into the future.