Michael Wollny has brought not only his new live album “Living Ghosts” and his uncompromising music to Tübingen.
His loyal fans have also followed him – from Stuttgart, Böblingen, and even Konstanz.
Now they sit close together, listening intently to what the trio, featuring renowned jazz pianist, American bassist Tim Lefebvre, and drummer Eric Schaefer, has to offer this Friday in the cozy Sudhaus forest beer garden, how they combine their themes and shape their sound.
And then the three musicians plunge into their music, self-absorbed, detached, as if reinvented for the moment.
The first improvisation, which culminates in the piece “When the Sleeper Wakes” from 2014, lasts about an hour.
Only then does Wollny address his audience, introduce his fellow musicians, and explain that they don’t actually have a set list, “they just start playing.”
Then he immerses himself in his music again, deconstructing themes with whimsical imagination so that they are barely recognizable, demonstrating what fills the open-air space behind the brewhouse with such sound.
Immediacy is what they seek: sound, that is the key word. The trio of 47-year-old jazz graduate Wollny embarks on a quest for the design of sound in their 90-minute set.
Yes, the path, the search, is the focus. Immediacy is what they seek. The rigid structure blurs. Instead, there is lightning-fast fingertip playing, wild elbow taps on piano keys, and tender hammering into the interior of the grand piano.
None of this is noise, but rather a wonderful fit with the acoustic soaring heights. The discussions after the concert nevertheless fluctuated in their assessment: While some found the ambiguous jazz sounds “very detached,” others praised the “chamber music quality,” “Wollny’s presence in playing the piano,” and one even described the jazz as “as transparent as a Bach sonata.”
One thing is certain: one witnesses a sometimes brilliant jazz demonstration, without ever straying into a well-worn path or a jazz platitude.
Michael Wollny shines above all with his subtle timing and his presence. With strands of medium-length hair draped over his face, the pianist leans low over the keys like a marionette with angular movements, listening intently to his accompanists, searching for sounds with them, suggesting phrases, laying the foundation.
Then, all of a sudden, he breaks away again, plays freely, and bursts into furiously fast runs.
Towards the end of the concert, the trio turns up the volume once again, and one can sense from the blurring tones that their search for sound is now nearing its end.
Almost. Because a much-acclaimed encore follows.
Michael Wollny – Piano
Tim Lefebvre – Bass
Eric Schaefer – Drums
