Malakoff Kowalski - My First Piano (2018) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

Malakoff Kowalski was born to Persian parents in Boston, grew up in Hamburg, and lives in Berlin today. His first solo album Neue Deutsche Reiselieder was released in 2009. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung described his 2012 album, Kill Your Babies—Filmscore for an Unknown Picture, as “an album full of melancholic song sketches. As if he had cut out the pieces of a scratched copy of a Nouvelle Vague film.” In 2015, the album I Love You was released, a mix of jazz, folk and film music.

Of the many instruments that can be heard in Kowalski’s recordings, the piano has always played a significant role. And so it is on his new album, My First Piano, that is being released on April 6, 2018 on the label MPS. These ten piano pieces are described by the critic Max Dax in the liner notes as “little hybrids of finger exercises, doodling, aphorisms and the laconic. A bold, well-tempered piano player blurring the lines between classical and jazz.”

The cover image of the baby photo on the piano was discovered by accident in an old family album. Kowalski went in search of the forgotten piano from his childhood and brought it back to Berlin some thirty years later.

“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 that’s the only way I’ve 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 then—this 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 together 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, Kowalski’s piano music can be heard now in Lisa Langseth’s film Euphoria, a drama featuring Alicia Vikander, Eva Green and Charlotte Rampling in the starring roles.

In his solo concerts on the piano, Kowalski will be presenting his newly released My First Piano, parts of the last two albums, as well as extracts from his stage and film music.

"Heartfelt music that searches, finds and gets lost again. Beautiful and addictive." (Chilly Gonzales)

Tracklist:
01. Shorou 03:28
02. My First Piano 03:04
03. Is It Spring? 02:37
04. Dimanche Soir 03:09
05. Serge Chez Juliette Encore Une Fois 03:20
06. 65 East India Row 03:14
07. Euphoria, Lobster & Champagne 03:23
08. Olmo Rosenthal 05:09
09. Tehran Lullaby 03:16
10. Anin Goldkind 07:55

Personnel:
Malakoff Kowalski, piano