Malakoff Kowalski & Johanna Summer

In the organizer's words:

"Songs with words" as a contrapuntal allusion to Mendelssohn Bartholdy's "Songs without words": this is the name of the new album by German-American-Persian musician and composer Malakoff Kowalski, recorded with Igor Levit, Johanna Summer and Chilly Gonzales at the piano. The repertoire consists of classical miniatures by Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Grieg and Ravel, among others, paired with sung texts by beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The extraordinary quartet succeeds in creating a new kind of music, possibly a completely new genre, which is vaguely located between classical music, jazz and pop.

You can hear a singer-songwriter cycle that is remotely reminiscent of Tom Waits and Jim Morrison, combined with Bill Evans, Kurt Weill and Michel Legrand. In the intimate atmosphere of the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, Kowalski and Johanna Summer will now perform this Gesamtkunstwerk: European piano tradition interwoven with American poetry. In addition, excerpts from Summer's piano albums "Schumann Kaleidoskop" and "Resonanzen" as well as from Kowalski's albums "My First Piano", "Onomatopoetika" and "Piano Aphorisms" will be played. "Touching and beguiling" (Süddeutsche Zeitung).