The Mongolian-born, Berlin-based pianist, composer, conductor and arranger Shuteen Erdenebaatar deals in threes: three albums, three compositional pillars, three celestial symbols woven into the mythology of her homeland. It’s a pattern that runs through her work like a golden thread, and one that has propelled her to the forefront of the European jazz scene with remarkable speed.
Her award-winning debut album, the quartet project Rising Sun (2023), ushered her onto the world stage. Under the Same Stars (2025), the second volume in her trilogy for Motéma Music, featured her evocative piano alongside Nils Kugelmann's contra-alto clarinet and upright bass. Due for release in 2027, her chamber jazz orchestra recording Beyond The Moon will complete the trilogy, three albums inspired by Mongolian celestial mythology.
The journey began in her hometown of Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital. Classically trained from age 6 to 20, Erdenebaatar earned her degree in classical composition in 2020, then left her homeland to pursue jazz at the Musikhochschule in Munich, earning double master's degrees in jazz piano and jazz composition. From there, Berlin beckoned, but it was her time at the Musikhochschule which proved a pivotal point. After 14 years of rigorous classical training, one recording cracked everything open.
"It all started with a recording by Brad Mehldau," she tells me, "the 10 Years Solo Live album. Until that moment, piano playing for me was classical pieces which were all written out. I didn't know such a thing as improvising. That particular record was very eye-opening for me, seeing how he unites genres – he plays music by Radiohead, but he also plays music by Brahms and Bach, and jazz standards. When I started Jazz Studies in Munich I tried to listen to everything I could, from the Bud Powell/Thelonious Monk era to modern stuff like Tigran Hamasyan and Aaron Parks."
Mirroring the trilogy of releases, the foundation of Erdenebaatar's compositional voice reflects its own power of three: melody, traditional music, and landscape. Melody comes first and always has. One of the standouts on the debut album is the gorgeous title track, based on the traditional Mongolian song ‘Mandakh Nar’, originally in 4/4 which Erdenebaatar recasts in a seductive 7/4 groove.
"It's a traditional Mongolian song which has been guiding me since I was very little – one of the first songs I learned to sing in kindergarten. I really loved the melody. It's about a woman who waits every day, when the sun rises, for her husband to come home from war. I didn't understand its bittersweet lyrics at the time. That's something I cherish a lot in traditional Mongolian music: it's all about melody, and that's also my approach to the music. There are three different things which, for me, make good music – harmony, rhythm and melody. And, for me, melody is on top of everything else."
The primacy of melody was further shaped by another childhood influence – thanks to her father being an opera director, she spent most of her early years at the opera house, absorbing some of the most memorable melodies in the classical canon, from Mozart’s The Magic Flute to Puccini’s La bohème, all translated and sung in Mongolian.
Then there’s landscape. Located between Russia to the north and China to the south, landlocked Mongolia has a land area roughly equivalent to the combined countries of western and central Europe – vast and elemental. "The Mongolian landscape is very wide – not in the city where I grew up, but the countryside – and you feel so free. The picture of that landscape in Mongolia also plays, at least mentally, a role in my music."
In Munich, Erdenebaatar studied under some exceptional mentors. In the journey of finding an authentic artistic voice, it was a single conversation that proved decisive.
"I had the opportunity to study jazz composition with Gregor Huebner – a violin player from Germany – for two years. As I was coming from classical music and new to this rhythmic and harmonic world, it was hard to know what to do on the piano. Most of the teachers would say you have to learn all these standards. I learned those tunes, but what could I do with them? There are thousands of recordings of people who play amazingly. Gregor said to me that I don't have to imitate somebody else, that I just have to be myself. He said that everybody has a special voice within themselves, and it's about finding what it is. That was very helpful advice."
The accolades have followed. Rising Sun won the Möngön Mod (Silver Tree) award, Mongolia's equivalent of the Oscars, for Best Musical Work, the first time a jazz album had received this honour. In April 2024, Erdenebaatar went on to win the prestigious Deutscher Jazzpreis for Ensemble of the Year.
The duo format of the follow-up, Under the Same Stars, presented its own creative challenge. "To write for the duo was also a challenging but fun process – knowing how to combine the instruments, because the contra-alto clarinet isn't a trumpet or violin that shines through. You have to be careful in terms of voicings and dynamics to let the clarinet shine."
The celestial trilogy – Rising Sun, Under the Same Stars, and the forthcoming Beyond The Moon – was not, she insists, a grand design from the outset.
"The idea came with the release of Rising Sun, unexpectedly and unintentionally. I had planned the trilogy, three albums which are completely different but which are all a representation of my musicality. The first album was called Rising Sun
because of the Mongolian folk song – the sun is for optimism and good vibes and something that accompanies us through life. I had the idea to connect the next albums, and then it made sense – the stars, moon and sun play a huge role in fairy tales, you can even see those symbols in the Mongolian flag, so it's something that we cherish a lot. Nature, animals, the sun, moon and stars that we live under. I think it also comes from shamanism – I'm not 100% sure, but that's what I experienced as a child. On New Year's Eve, people would throw milk to the sun, moon and stars. I wanted to include that symbolism in the trilogy. I had a feeling that it's something I could express in the music of each project. Because of the people who are playing on it, Rising Sun is very optimistic. The duo album Under the Same Stars is also kind of hopeful but it's more on the melancholic side. Beyond the Moon has something mystical about it."
For the Music Network tour, Erdenebaatar will be performing with saxophonist Simon Comté, bassist Nils Kugelmann and drummer Amir Bresler, a trio of collaborators who each bring their own distinctive musicality to the project.
"Nils is the musician I've played with the longest, since I moved to Munich. We've been playing, I think, almost seven years. We're also partners in life, so we spend a lot of time together and we understand each other on stage. He knows what I'm playing, and I know what he's playing without having to communicate. That's a connection that I really appreciate a lot. Amir is a Berlin-based drummer with whom I'm playing for a year – he's one of the first musicians we got to play with since we moved to Berlin. He's one of the first people I met where I had the feeling that drums are really an instrument you can make music out of, melodically. It was kind of mind-blowing to see someone playing drums like that. Simon just turned 21 this year. He lives in New York City but originally comes from Brussels. He's joining us for this tour and he's also going to play on our next album. I don't think any of the band members have ever been to Ireland before, so it's the first time for everybody. We're so much looking forward to it."
As well as performing material from the debut and the duo album, audiences will also get to hear new tunes from the forthcoming Beyond The Moon – music that will be formally captured in the studio after the Ireland tour wraps. With three cities lived in, three degrees earned, and a celestial trilogy almost complete, it’s clear that this is an artist who hasn’t just found her voice, she’s built an entire universe around it. Whatever the moon holds, she’s ready for it.