Four is a winner: that was the unanimous opinion of critics and audiences alike on the first album from German-Swedish supergroup 4 Wheel Drive. The eponymous debut disc from this band of bandleaders went straight to the top spot as best-selling jazz album in Germany for2019. And the media didn’t hold back with their praise either: “Four first-league jazz musicians with pure joy of playing and a love of good pop music”, said ZDF’s “heute-journal” about this spirited and enjoyable group, which combines trombonist/singer Nils Landgren, pianist Michael Wollny, bassist/cellist Lars Danielsson and drummer Wolfgang Haffner. AllAboutJazz, a leading American jazz website, asked whether this album might be worth adding to a listener’s collection, and answered the question succinctly:”4 sure”.

"As an improviser, you often find that it‘s not the compositions themselves you‘re playing, but your own memories of them. And as these memories come back to you in the moment, they assert their continuing existence in the here and now," says Michael Wollny. In other words, songs are like ghosts. Wollny‘s new album "Ghosts" is a gathering of some of the ghosts that regularly haunt him. Typically for Wollny, they range from classics like Franz Schubert's "Erlkönig" to jazz standards, film music, songs with a certain fragility by Nick Cave, say, or the band Timber Timbre, and also include his own darkly evocative original compositions.

This story begins with just one sound, originating in the place which Berlin jazz people think of as their living room, the A-Trane. Back in December 2019, the club was host to four leading figures in today’s improvised music scene, who turned this cozy space into their blank canvas, their research lab. In eight sets over four nights, piano phenomenon Michael Wollny, re-inventor of the soprano saxophone Emile Parisien, electric bass icon Tim Lefebvre, and that free spirit of the drum kit Christian Lillinger were given free rein.

The dubbing spokesman Christian Brückner (among others for Robert De Niro) and Michael Wollny prove to be the perfect couple to let Heinrich Heine sound again. With aesthetic flair and imagination, Michael picks up the mood and gesture of the poems and prepares the musical breeding ground for Brückner's haunting performance of the texts in mostly completely free improvisations. Voice and piano intertwine and inspire each other in the dialogue of recitation and real-time composition.

On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin left the Columbia command module, and just under three hours later became the first people to land on the moon. Michael Collins stayed on board Columbia and spent the next day alone orbiting the moon, waiting for his colleagues to return, losing visual and radio contact with the earth for 46:38 minutes of each orbit. One report of the time claimed that “not since Adam has any human known such solitude”, but when Collins was asked about that, he explained that his solo orbit of the moon, despite the fact of being alone, was characterized by the following states of mind: “awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation.”

It’s a very special kind of meeting, a leap across the generation divide: Melancholia documents the creative collaboration between one of the most important influences on post-war jazz and one of the greatest talents of the new breed of jazzers in Germany: Heinz Sauer and Michael Wollny.
Sauer has always been a master of the terse miniature, but not in the way that it is shown in this CD. The music can be contrasted with his compositions for the Jazz Ensemble of Jazz Ensemble of the Frankfurt Radio where he brings together strange themes in amazing elaborate arrangements…

The exciting Berlin trio Michael Wollny / Eva Kruse / Eric Schaefer present their third album: no easy task, after all of the last few years’ critical praise that has accompanied the two previous albums they recorded for ACT, and the same critical acclaim has followed their live performances.
At its best, and in its greatest moments, jazz is the art that unearths the universal elements that lie buried in each individual. The ad-hoc arrangements of many jazz recordings stand in stark contrast to this aspiration, and to escape the curse of the smallest common denominator, it’s also necessary to have a fixed formation in jazz. Yet especially in German jazz, groups that remain together and come out with new CDs over a longer period of time are the exception…

Heinz Sauer is presented here in a brilliantly exciting juxtaposition, with two partners with very distinctive profiles. On the one hand you have Wollny who subtlety combines universal piano nuances ranging from romantic gloom to the brusquely clanging new sound world. On the other, you have Kühn - full of energy, the eternal "Sturm und Drang" musician, expressing strong emotions and a master of the explosive turbulence and heartfelt beauty of sound.
In their unwillingness to compromise and the intensity of their expression, both pianists join separately but amiably with the saxophonist. Sauer is a musician who is able to change the tonal nuances of his tenor saxophone in a split second. His sound flows like lava - glowing red, then cold, forming craggy formations…

"Whatever you do, question everything around you and don’t simply follow authorities." While this attitude might be associated by some with punk music, it was also adopted by jazz visionaries like Miles Davis and Albert Mangelsdorff. Reinventing yourself, discovering something new, making a clean sweep, being a bit of a rebel and always being driven by creativity - this outlook also applies to Michael Wollny, Eva Kruse and Eric Schaefer.
Michael Wollny once said that they wanted to have some punk in their jazz. Breaking boundaries is the philosophy of the trio and certainly holds true on "Wasted & Wanted". European jazz tradition, indie rock, Western and contemporary art music, sound experiments and some punk attitude - this all merges effortlessly and uniquely together and makes the trio one-of-a-kind…