Johanna Summer & Malakoff Kowalski

This is where two artists meet who seek the same quality from very different perspectives: depth through reduction, magic in between, expression beyond mere virtuosity. Johanna Summer and Malakoff Kowalski share an extraordinary mutual appreciation — and are bringing this to the stage for the first time in a joint duo program.
The starting point is two new releases: Summers Jazz EP Upright (ACT 2025) and Kowalski's album Songs With Words (Sony Classical 2025), in which miniatures of classical composers are combined with sung poems by Allen Ginsberg — recorded with Igor Levit, Johanna Summer and Chilly Gonzales on the piano, among others. Parallel to these recordings, a seven-piece jazz suite by Johanna Summer was created out of a studio mood, which combines her own with standards and a Wagner elegy.
It is precisely this constellation that shapes the concert repertoire: Excerpts from both publications meet solo piano music and form a dramaturgy of improvised jazz, European piano tradition and American beat poetry. Summer's background — influenced, among other things, by studying in Dresden and the encounter with free jazz legend Günter “Baby” Sommer — meets Kowalski's compositional style as a German-American-Persian artist who also works for theatre and film. The result is a concert format that doesn't claim to combine genres — but simply does it at the moment.

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