Members: Matt Cerf (producer), Shawn Mitiska (producer), Jaren Cerf (vocalist, songwriter)
Formed: 2005, United States / Canada
Genres: Progressive Trance, Vocal Trance, Uplifting Trance
Label: Armada Music
Years Active: 2005–2012 (primary); 2023 (reunion)
Associated Acts: Dash Berlin, Armin van Buuren, Pulser, Rank 1, Audien, Chris Jones
Three Names, One Sound
There is a particular economy to the name Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren. It lists three people in the order they appear on a credits sheet — two producers, one vocalist and songwriter — and says nothing else. No clever portmanteau, no alias designed to suggest a brand identity, just the names of the people involved, because apparently they could not agree on anything more inventive. The self-deprecating honesty of that origin story is consistent with everything else about how the trio operated: a genuine creative partnership without a carefully managed public image, making music that was emotionally direct in a genre that often preferred bombast to specificity.
What they built across seven years, a debut album, and a catalogue of singles that lodged permanently in the A State of Trance collective memory was one of the most fully realised expressions of progressive vocal trance that the Armada Music era produced. That their biggest record nearly disappeared under someone else\’s name, and that the story of how that happened took more than a decade to be told in full, is one of the less comfortable chapters in that era\’s history — but it belongs to the complete picture of who Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren were, and what they were capable of creating.
How It Started: Matt Cerf, Shawn Mitiska, and a Singer Named Jaren (2005–2006)
Matt Cerf and Shawn Mitiska were already working as a production partnership when Jaren Cerf — an American recording artist and songwriter who would eventually accumulate over 300 published song titles, two folk albums, a Billboard number two, and a Canadian national anthem for the Sochi Olympics across her career — entered the picture in 2005. The connection between the two Cerfs is familial: Matt and Jaren are siblings, which meant the creative partnership was built on a foundation of both professional trust and the particular candour that only family dynamics produce.
Jaren had begun her musical life far from electronic music. A competitive country singer and yodeler in her early years, she had moved through folk and singer-songwriter territory before discovering trance — a genre whose emotional architecture, she found, suited her instincts as a lyricist and melodist more naturally than any of the forms she had worked in before. The specificity and sincerity that her training as a songwriter demanded translated directly into trance\’s vocal tradition, where a great lyric could elevate a production from a dancefloor tool into something that listeners carried with them.
The trio\’s founding was not the result of a formal business decision but of three musicians who found that what they made together worked — that Jaren\’s melodies and lyrics sat naturally inside what Matt and Shawn were building in the studio, and that the emotional directness of the combination was something worth pursuing seriously.
By 2006 they were signed to Armada Music, the Dutch trance and electronic music powerhouse that was at the height of its influence as the primary home of the genre\’s most significant vocal and progressive releases.
Breaking Through: Light the Skies, Saved Again (2006–2008)
The debut single \”Light the Skies\” announced the trio to the trance world in 2006 with a confidence that belied how recently the partnership had formed. The production was firmly within the progressive trance tradition that Armada had championed — melodic, forward-moving, built around Jaren\’s vocal in a way that gave the synth arrangements something to respond to rather than simply support. It was selected for the opening track of the A State of Trance 2007 compilation — the first track on disc one, the most prominent placement available on one of the genre\’s most widely distributed annual documents — a signal of how seriously Armin van Buuren and Armada regarded the new arrival.
\”Saved Again\” followed in 2007, appearing on the same ASOT 2007 compilation in its Dub Mix form and further cementing the trio\’s profile within the trance community. The template was becoming clear: emotionally specific lyrics delivered by a voice that understood how to phrase within a trance structure, over productions that prioritised melodic coherence over peak-time impact without sacrificing dancefloor utility.
\”You Never Said\” arrived in 2008 and represented a step forward in the sophistication of both the writing and the production. Written and produced by Shawn Mitiska, Matt Cerf, and Jaren Cerf, released on Armada Music in vinyl format, it appeared on the ASOT Top 1000 — the definitive fan-voted list of the genre\’s greatest records — at position 435, confirming that the audience was not simply following but genuinely moved by what the trio was making. The lyric\’s specific emotional register — the particular kind of ache that comes from something left unspoken — was precisely the territory that Jaren\’s songwriting occupied most convincingly, and the production gave it the space it needed.
Man On The Run: A Record, a Credit, and a Decade of Silence (2009)
In 2009, Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren were presented with what seemed at the time like an extraordinary opportunity: a collaboration with Dash Berlin, one of the trance world\’s most prominent acts of that era, on a track that would go out through Armada Music to the full reach of the global trance broadcast network.
The song that became \”Man On The Run\” originated entirely within the CM&J camp. Jaren wrote the lyrics and melody. Matt and Shawn built the production. The trio sent their completed version to Dash Berlin, who incorporated their own additional production elements into the arrangement. What emerged from that process was a record of genuine emotional power — Jaren\’s vocal carrying a lyric about pursuit and momentum that felt both personal and universal, over a production that moved with the kind of purposeful energy that distinguished the best progressive trance of the period.
What happened next, however, was not what any of the trio had anticipated or agreed to. When the track was released, it appeared across the genre\’s biggest radio shows and podcasts credited as Dash Berlin feat. Jaren — with no mention of Matt Cerf or Shawn Mitiska, and with Jaren reduced from co-writer and co-creator to featured vocalist. The artwork had already been distributed for promotion before any of the trio had seen it. Jaren and her partners contacted their manager and the label immediately to demand correction. They were told it would take time. It did — more than they were led to expect. When the credit was eventually corrected on some formats to reflect Dash Berlin with Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren, the promotional cycle had largely run its course and the initial credit had become the version that most listeners knew.
Jaren was told by those around her that speaking publicly about the situation would end her career. She stayed silent for more than a decade. In 2024, she published a detailed account on Medium that laid out the full sequence of events — the origin of the song within their own production, the crediting decision that was made without their knowledge or consent, the professional consequences of having their names absent from a record that went on to become one of the most significant trance tracks of its era, and the time it took — more than two years of asking — before she was permitted to release even a solo piano version of a song she had written herself.
The record itself, whatever the circumstances of its release, became a landmark. \”Man On The Run\” placed at number 5 in the A State of Trance Top 20 of 2009, number 8 in the all-time ASOT Top 1000, and has consistently appeared on listener-compiled lists of the greatest vocal trance tracks ever made. It is, by any measure, one of the defining records of its generation in the genre. That it is defined in the memory of most listeners by the name of a DJ act rather than the songwriters who created it is an injury that the 2024 account made public for the first time.
The Armin van Buuren remix of \”Beggin\’ You\” — released in the same year — provided a separate and less contested measure of the trio\’s standing, placing at number 3 in the ASOT Top 20 of 2009 and at number 145 in the all-time ASOT Top 1000. Two records in the top five of the same year\’s listener vote, and a further entry in the all-time top 150: by any metric, 2009 was the peak of Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren\’s commercial and cultural impact within trance.
Give Me A Sound: The Album (2012)
The debut album arrived in 2012 — more than six years after the formation of the trio, and at a point when the trance world had shifted significantly from the progressive landscape in which they had built their reputation. Give Me A Sound was released on Armada Music with 13 tracks and featured collaborations with Dash Berlin, Pulser, Rank 1, Audien, Chris Jones, and Fine Taste — a roster that demonstrated the connections the trio had built across their years on the label, and that gave the record a breadth of production texture that a purely self-contained project could not have achieved.
The album\’s title track and its surrounding material attempted to synthesise where the trio\’s sound had evolved to after years of singles — more spacious in its production choices, more varied in its tempo and emotional range, but still anchored by the quality of Jaren\’s vocal performances and the emotional directness of her writing. The collaborations gave different tracks different production characters without fracturing the overall coherence of the record.
“Starting Right Now,” a collaboration with Chris Jones, extended the vocal trance template into brighter, more overtly uplifting territory. The Pulser collaboration brought a more hypnotic progressive sensibility. The Rank 1 track connected the album to the Dutch trance lineage that had always been one of Armada\’s defining threads. Together, the features demonstrated how naturally the CM&J aesthetic could accommodate different production approaches without losing what made it distinctive.
Jaren: Beyond the Trio
Jaren Cerf’s work outside the trio context ran throughout the same years and extended well beyond them. Her collaboration with Armin van Buuren on “Unforgivable” — released in 2009 on Armada Music — placed at number 304 in the all-time ASOT Top 1000 and at number 19 in the ASOT Top 20 of 2009, giving her a simultaneous presence at multiple points on the year’s listener vote that very few artists could claim. The track was credited directly under her first name alone, as Armin van Buuren feat. Jaren, and has remained one of the more frequently cited examples of her vocal range and emotional authority as a performer.
She also worked with Aly & Fila, whose “For All Time” EP carried her vocal; with Feel on “Losing Time” in 2017; and with Fatum on “Wait for the World\” in 2020. Later collaborations with Avenue One produced the 2023 single “Sweet Dreams” and the 2024 single “My Way Home,” while “Count on Me” with Aly & Fila, Philippe El Sisi, and Omar Sherif appeared in 2024 — demonstrating that her connection to trance remained active long after the primary CM&J chapter had closed.
Outside trance, she co-wrote “We Are Gold,” performed by Canadian artist Andee as the country\’s anthem for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In 2013, under the alias Fenja, her collaboration with French DJ and producer Antoine Clamaran on “This Is My Goodbye” reached number two on the Billboard Dance Club Songs Chart for three consecutive weeks. In 2015 she starred in the Canadian stage production Oh Canada, What A Feeling, portraying Joni Mitchell, Celine Dion, and Sylvia Tyson to favourable reviews. Her portfolio of published song titles eventually exceeded 300 works across multiple genres and national markets.
She has since built a parallel career as a vocal coach and educator, launching SingWithJaren.com with courses including An Introduction to Singing By Ear and Mastering Vocal Licks, and has operated the Safe Harbour Artist Protection Program, a mentoring initiative for young artists that draws directly on her own experience of navigating the music industry\’s less transparent dimensions.
The 2023 Return
More than a decade after the primary chapter of their partnership had concluded, the trio reunited in 2023 to revisit \”Man On The Run.\” The 2023 edit, released through Armada Music under the correct credit — Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren — kept Jaren\’s original vocal performance intact while the producers rebuilt the surrounding soundscape with progressive basslines and contemporary synthesis, updating the track\’s production without disturbing the emotional core that had made it a landmark. The release was both an artistic decision and a symbolic one: reclaiming, on their own terms and under their own names, the record that had defined their peak and been presented to the world under someone else\’s.
Legacy
What Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren built between 2005 and 2012 sits permanently within the architecture of trance\’s golden progressive era. Three records in the all-time ASOT Top 1000 — “Man On The Run” at number 8, “Beggin’ You” at number 145, \”Light the Skies\” at number 308, \”You Never Said\” at number 435 — place them among the most represented acts in the definitive listener-voted canon of the genre\’s history. The debut album, when it finally arrived, demonstrated that the quality of the singles had not been accidental.
But the fuller story of who they were — the songwriting origins of their most celebrated record, the crediting decisions that were made without their knowledge, the silence that was imposed and eventually broken — belongs to the biography as much as the chart positions do. Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren made music of genuine emotional intelligence in a genre that did not always reward that quality as consistently as it should. The fact that listeners voted their records into the upper reaches of trance\’s all-time canon regardless is the most durable measure of what they actually achieved.