Malakoff Kowalski - My First Piano (2018)

Malakoff Kowalski was born to Persian parents in Boston, grew up in Hamburg, and lives in Berlin today. Of the many instruments that can be heard in Kowalskis recordings, the piano has always played a significant role. And so it is on this album, My First Piano. These ten piano pieces are described by the critic Max Dax as little hybrids of finger exercises, doodling, aphorisms and the laconic. A bold, well-tempered piano player blurring the lines between classical and jazz. Kowalski writes: My earliest childhood memories are of lying curled up under the piano stool, listening to my mother playing Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Scriabin. There are not many places or things that feel like home to me. Our family is scattered all over the world and thats the only way Ive ever known it. But having my old baby piano with me again, with its ivory white rounded keys, the decorated sound holes and the unpadded stool, just like back thenthis all feels a bit like home. Malakoff Kowalski has worked also as a film and theater composer. Over the past years, he has collaborated closely with the filmmaker Klaus Lemke and the stage director Angela Richter. His stage music for Parzival and Faust were last to be heard at the Schauspielhaus in Cologne and the Staatstheater in Stuttgart. In the cinemas, Kowalskis piano music can be heard now in Lisa Langseths film Euphoria, a drama featuring Alicia Vikander, Eva Green and Charlotte Rampling in the starring roles.