Michael Wollny

In 2001, Michael Wollny wrote his diploma thesis on “sound rolls” in the improvisations of Joachim Kühn. Today he himself is the subject of musicological studies – 2018, for example, a study on the “Sound Library of Michael Wollny” was published. In the meantime, Wollny has not only played and recorded an album with Joachim Kühn, whom he admires, he has also followed in his footsteps as the most internationally successful and important German jazz pianist. There is no trade magazine that does not give him superlatives, no large feuilleton that has not woven wreaths for him, and since he landed in 2014 with the trio album “Weltentraum” in the “Tagesthemen”, in the “heute journal” and at the top of the pop charts, he has also filled the big halls with his performances. And probably no German jazz musician has won more prizes than Wollny.

Much more important, of course, is what is behind all these successes: that Wollny surprises, touches and inspires his listeners and his companions anew with every album and in every concert. On the one hand, thanks to his physical and mental agility, his unique ability to anticipate and react, which makes him a consummate improviser. On the other hand, through his unconditional will to style, with which he turns all conceivable influences into something new and his own, whether the inspiration comes from Schubert or Mahler, from Varèse or Hindemith, from Björk or Kraftwerk, from Japanese horror films or urban poetry, from thought formations or natural phenomena.

The foundations for this were laid early on. Born in Schweinfurt in 1978, Michael Wollny had his first piano and violin lessons at the age of 5, an important influence was his big sister, who, as a flutist, mainly introduced him to classical Romanticism. For him, playing the piano was “always both – improvisation, and playing Bach or Mozart”. When he went to the Herrmann Zilcher Conservatory in Würzburg as a guest student at the age of 16, he was discovered by pianist and university teacher Chris Beier, who took him under his wing as a young student at the Würzburg University of Music. The next stations are called the BundesJugendJazzorchester (BuJazzO), the first own trio and a duo with saxophonist Hubert Winter. In 2001, Wollny received an invitation to join the HR jazz ensemble.

Here he can work with the grandees of German jazz: Albert and Emil Mangelsdorff, Christof Lauer and, last but not least, Heinz Sauer. The saxophonist is enthusiastic about the young man at the piano and invites him to a duo. Four award-winning joint albums testify to an extraordinary partnership that continues to this day across the generations. Musical dialogue at eye level – this is also the principle of the trio, which Michael Wollny founded in parallel in 2002 with bassist Eva Kruse and drummer Eric Schaefer and which existed until 2013. Their debut album “call it” in 2005 is also the start of the ACT series “Young German Jazz”, which is still successful today. With this and four other albums, Wollny and his trio soar to the “most exciting piano trio in the world” (Die ZEIT) with a “future sound of jazz” (The Observer).

This means that the time is ripe for the international stage. Wollny seeks an encounter with Scandinavian jazz, tours with star trombonist Nils Landgren in a duo as well as a member of his bands and with the quartet of bassist Lars Danielsson. In 2009, he recorded an album with the Israeli harpsichordist Tamar Halperin, the title of which offers itself as a parenthesis for his complete work: “Wunderkammer”. A milestone in 2012 will be the opening concert of the “Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic” with Iiro Rantala and Leszek Możdżer. “That was great, not to say world class” was the headline of the ZDF about the summit meeting of these three pianists, which is immortalized as a live recording.
This is followed by duo concerts with artists such as Gary Peacock and Joachim Kühn; Encounters with the pop musician Konstantin Gropper, the British electronic free spirit Leafcutter John or the voice artist and composer Alex Nowitz, as well as dialogues with Ror Wolf, Hartmut Rosa, Christian Brückner and Robert Stadlober.
The ACT Jubilee Night in Paris for the 20th anniversary of the label, also in 2012, will be the birth of Wollny’s partnership with the French accordionist Vincent Peirani, documented among other things with the duo album “Tandem” in 2016. And with him, the soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien and the Swiss vocal artist Andreas Schaerer, this soon resulted in a European supergroup of up-and-coming jazz improvisers for “Out of Land”. And another one followed in 2019 with 4 Wheel Drive, the quartet with Nils Landgren, Lars Danielsson and Wolfgang Haffner, which broke records on its tour.

Of course, Wollny had already become a bestseller that broke the usual jazz circle, especially with the trio now operating under his name, which has been the focus of his work since 2014 and also gave him his way into the international limelight. With the inseparable companion Eric Schaefer on drums and first the American Tim Lefebvre, then with the Swiss Christian Weber on bass, he releases “Weltentraum” (2014), “Nachtfahrten” (2015) and in 2018 then simultaneously the two albums “Oslo” and the live album “Wartburg” with Emile Parisien as a guest. Of course, as always, without making lazy compromises or serving the mainstream. The Michael Wollny Trio is now celebrated as “the most exciting piano trio in Europe” (The London Times).

Wollny has always been tirelessly looking for creative challenges. Although he has also been a professor at the Leipzig University of Music and Drama for six years, he always takes time for something special. Whether he leaves his mark as an “artist in residence” at festivals from the Rheingau Music Festival to the Elbjazz Hamburg (where he is the first ever in this function), enriches the music festival of the Alte Oper Frankfurt with classical interpretations, has a whole series of evenings dedicated to him at the Konzerthaus Dortmund or he performs together with Geir Lysne as an artist in residence with the Norwegian Wind Ensemble for several years in a large number of concerts, workshops and projects – including a setting of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s film classic “Nosferatu” – explores and develops the improvisational possibilities of a classical ensemble.
In 2019, he received the composition commission for the opening evening of the “100 Years of Bauhaus” festival, and the Bau.Haus.Klang project celebrated its premiere in front of Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier. In all these diverse projects, Wollny is concerned with sounding out new sound spaces and new artistic encounters. As a regular guest at the Philharmonie Berlin, “Der Wanderer” is also a cross-border collaboration with the composer Christian Jost in 2019 at the invitation of the Berliner Philharmoniker, which continues in the same year with a guest performance with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in China.

Even the Corona lockdown has not been able to tame his creativity. He simply looked inward and recorded a solo album after “Hexentanz” (2007), the “Mondenkind”, which will be released in September 2020: an overwhelming dialogue with the instrument and the space, and a deep look into Wollny’s personal “Book of Sounds” with music by new composers such as Alban Berg, pop icon Tori Amos, singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens and, of course, with his own compositions. A quintessence of the artistic biography to date, which confirms Wollny’s exceptional position in German, European and international jazz.