Johanna Summer and Malakoff Kowalski are now sharing the stage for the first time with a joint duo programme – on the occasion of two new releases > the jazz EP ‘Upright ’(ACT 2025) by Johanna Summer and the album ‘Songs With Words ’(Sony Classical 2025) by Malakoff Kowalski as a singer together with Igor Levit, Johanna Summer and Chilly Gonzales on the piano: a pairing of miniatures by classical composers with sung poems by beat poet Allen Ginsberg. During the recordings of this album, a seven-piece jazz suite by Johanna Summer was created in parallel on a studio whim, combining her own works with standards and an elegy by Richard Wagner.
‘Her virtuosic, blazing playing has an inner life of its own. Detached from composer and interpreter, from capabilities and desires, from past and present. Unbelievable. Pure joy. Johanna Summer is a dazzling pianist. ’This is how Malakoff Kowalski tries to shed light on his colleague's music in a raving review he published in DIE ZEIT. Johanna Summer in turn says of the musician and composer > ‘To say so much more through economy than through many notes — Malakoff Kowalski is an absolute master of this art. There is magic ‘between ’his musical events and contrasting gestures that would never be possible through superficial virtuosity.’
