The search for the essence, the core of things: both singer Filippa Gojo and saxophonist Stephan Mattner have been on this journey throughout their entire musical development. So it was only a matter of time that the two Cologne-based musicians continued this exploration together.

Reduced to voice and soprano saxophone while expanded through specifically applied effects and computer sounds, Gojo & Mattner combine in Nucleus the reduction of musical structures to the essentials, but always in connection with the abstract, the not quite tangible. The relationships between the structural levels are also constantly changing: the elements clearly stand out from one another, unmistakably separating themselves in accompaniment and melody, electronics and acoustics, while also merging with each other without any audible separation.

During her studies at the University of Music and Dance in Cologne, Filippa Gojo was soon in the middle of the action with German jazz greats, renowned orchestras such as the WDR Bigband, and her own quartet. In 2015, Filippa Gojo received both the New German Jazz Prize for her band project and the competition's soloist prize. She has been a professor at the Nuremberg University of Music since 2023.

Stephan Mattner was a guest of the WDR Big Band, the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra and played with Nils Wogram, Nicolas Simion and the FuchsThone Orchestra among others. As a saxophonist, composer and arranger, he moves between the parameters of tradition and modernity. His artistic work took him and his ensembles to many major stages and festivals in Europe, as well as to Australia and India. International collaborations and concert tours arose in collaboration with the Goethe Institutes in France, Italy, Spain and India.