Thomas Sauerborn

Carlotta Armbruster – trombone
Nabou Claerhout (BE) – trombone
Lucas Leidinger – piano
Tabea Kind – double bass
Thomas Sauerborn – drums, composition

MIRABELLE—named after a fruit smaller than its flavour would suggest—brings together five strong musical personalities who refuse to become an overbred supermarket orchestra. Instead, Cologne-based drummer and composer Thomas Sauerborn shapes two trombones, piano, bass and drums into an ensemble that behaves like a wild mirabelle tree: branching, resilient, and unexpectedly tasty.

The two trombones of Carlotta Armbruster and Nabou Claerhout form the double core of the sound—warm and full of poetic force. Piano and bass branch into harmonic spaces, while Sauerborn’s precise, flexible rhythmic language keeps the juice flowing.

Most pieces grow from a small melodic seed that unfolds in interplay, layering itself until it releases the collective energy Sauerborn calls “metamusic”—essentially, the art of shaping five individuals into one intense flavour.

MIRABELLE oscillates between clarity and abstraction, between dreamy sweetness and rugged freedom. It’s music that takes both emotion and experimentation seriously, yet always sounds fresh—like something just picked from the tree, only without the sticky fingers.

Sauerborn, a fellow of NICA artist development, is known for his work with bands such as Das Ende der Liebe (whose recent album PERSIST, created with Chinese performance artist su dance110, received the German Record Critics’ Award in 2025, and whose previous record SCHNEE* was listed among the Top 20 Albums of 2022 by GROOVE magazine), the pan-European improvisation collective Mount Meander (including releases on Cleanfeed), and the trio Pollon (nominated for the German Jazz Prize 2023). With his solo project [zimbel], he has been exploring the sonic worlds of a single suspended cymbal since 2015.