Michael Wollny // Ambrose Akinmusire

Born in the Bavarian town of Schweinfurt in 1978, Michael Wollny is one of the jewels of contemporary European jazz. With his own outstanding trio, in duos with such as the tenor saxophonists Heinz Sauer and Marius Neset and the accordionist Vincent Peirani, in partnership with larger ensembles such as the hr-Bigband or the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, Wollny has shown himself to be an endlessly creative partner for other musicians of matching temperaments. Tonight, however, he gives us the rare chance to hear him alone at the piano, filtering his ideas through a sensibility at once wonderfully refined yet broad enough to encompass music from Edgard Varèse to Joachim Kühn, Guillaume de Machaut to Angelo Badalamenti, Flaming Lips to Paul Hindemith, and Schubert to Björk. “All these different composers and music are around us at the same time,” he told the British journalist Charles Waring last year. “I try to stay open for all kinds of influences or ideas that come from anywhere.”
www.michaelwollny.com

Ambrose Akinmusire’s new composition, written specially for the festival, is inspired by four songs of Mattie Mae Thomas. They were recorded by a Library of Congress musicologist in 1939 during a field trip to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known to generations of African-Americans as Parchman Farm. Mattie Mae Thomas was an inmate of the women’s section; nothing more is known about her – not her age, her circumstances, her crime, or her eventual fate. Only these four extraordinary pieces survived to preserve a memento of a singer of great natural skill, self-confidence and emotional depth. When Akinmusire heard the recordings for the first time, he remarked that they reminded him of the singing of his own grandmother, who had been born in Mississippi and lived there most of her life. The trumpeter himself was born in Oakland, California in 1982 and has become one of the preeminent jazz musicians of the 21st century.

<small>Commissioned by Berliner Festspiele / Jazzfest Berlin</small>

www.ambroseakinmusire.com
www.facebook.com/DeanBowmanSolo/
www.geraldclayton.com
www.marvinsewell.com
www.joesandersbass.com
www.kendrickscott.com

Born in the Bavarian town of Schweinfurt in 1978, Michael Wollny is one of the jewels of contemporary European jazz. With his own outstanding trio, in duos with such as the tenor saxophonists Heinz Sauer and Marius Neset and the accordionist Vincent Peirani, in partnership with larger ensembles such as the hr-Bigband or the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, Wollny has shown himself to be an endlessly creative partner for other musicians of matching temperaments. Tonight, however, he gives us the rare chance to hear him alone at the piano, filtering his ideas through a sensibility at once wonderfully refined yet broad enough to encompass music from Edgard Varèse to Joachim Kühn, Guillaume de Machaut to Angelo Badalamenti, Flaming Lips to Paul Hindemith, and Schubert to Björk. “All these different composers and music are around us at the same time,” he told the British journalist Charles Waring last year. “I try to stay open for all kinds of influences or ideas that come from anywhere.”
www.michaelwollny.com

Ambrose Akinmusire’s new composition, written specially for the festival, is inspired by four songs of Mattie Mae Thomas. They were recorded by a Library of Congress musicologist in 1939 during a field trip to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known to generations of African-Americans as Parchman Farm. Mattie Mae Thomas was an inmate of the women’s section; nothing more is known about her – not her age, her circumstances, her crime, or her eventual fate. Only these four extraordinary pieces survived to preserve a memento of a singer of great natural skill, self-confidence and emotional depth. When Akinmusire heard the recordings for the first time, he remarked that they reminded him of the singing of his own grandmother, who had been born in Mississippi and lived there most of her life. The trumpeter himself was born in Oakland, California in 1982 and has become one of the preeminent jazz musicians of the 21st century.

<small>Commissioned by Berliner Festspiele / Jazzfest Berlin</small>

www.ambroseakinmusire.com
www.facebook.com/DeanBowmanSolo/
www.geraldclayton.com
www.marvinsewell.com
www.joesandersbass.com
www.kendrickscott.com