The pianist Michael Wollny played freely improvised concerts with prominent fellow musicians for his new album “XXXX”. A conversation about the joy of taking risks, the importance of the audience and music without a safety net.
Interview by
Oliver Hochkeppel
In December 2019, the pianist Michael Wollny, Germany’s most internationally known jazz musician of the younger generation, gathered a new quartet for four evenings in the Berlin jazz club A-Trane. With the American bass player Tim Lefebvre – through the jazz band Rudder, but also through pop productions Steely Dan, John Mayer or David Bowie’s last album “Blackstar” -, the French soprano saxophone redefiner Emile Parisien and the Berlin drumming free spirit Christian Lillinger – just awarded two German jazz prizes – the work of improvisation went completely without any guidelines. What was also new was that Wollny was not sitting at the concert grand, but at the Fender Rhodes e-piano and various synthesizers. From the resulting eight hours of music, Wollny and Lefebvre and the studio magician Jason Kingsland in Atlanta contributed to this in April Act released album “XXXX”. After a long compulsory break, this experiment is now being repeated by the Unterfahrt jazz club – in the Muffathalle, where this is also the first concert in many months.