Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic
Piano Night

Wollny has created innovative projects for more than 25 years, and has won more international prizes than any other German jazz musician. He receives consistently high critical acclaim, and, since his breakthrough with the album Weltentraum, has wide internantional appeal. His work always begins with an idea, from the genre-busting and dynamically driven Piano Trio at the beginning of his career, the emphasis on melody in Weltentraum, the acoustic echo of loneliness in his coronavirus solo Mondenkind, or the purely electronic mountains of sound in XXXX. 

Wollny, who has been a professor at the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre since 2014, has never been short of inspiration. It can come from the romantic classicism of Franz Schubert or Gustav Mahler, or from neo-tonalists like Edgar Varèse, Paul Hindemith and György Ligeti. (Wollny recently performed a programme alongside Pierre-Laurent Aimard at Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic to mark the 100th anniversary of György Ligeti’s birth). However, inspiration can also come from pop icons such as Björk, Pink or Kraftwerk, from Japanese horror films (including his latest trio album Ghosts), from urban poetry, space travel (Mondenkind), natural phenomena or architecture (as in his major project bau.haus.klang for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus). 

Wollny is equally committed to composition and improvisation, and works regularly alongside drummer Eric Schaefer, as well as with saxophonist icon Heinz Sauer, trombonist Nils Landgren, saxophonist Émile Parisien, accordionist and clarinettist Vincent Peirani, singer Andreas Schaerer, bass guitarist Tim Lefebvre, drummer Christian Lillinger and actor Christian Brückner. 

He performs frequently with large ensembles such as the Norwegian Wind Ensemble (on Nosferatu) or the hr-Bigband (on Wunderkammer XXL), and though the trio is his core ensemble, he is also an accomplished solo performer. “In recent years, I’ve really enjoyed playing on my own regularly, because it gives you a lot of freedom,” says Wollny. 

Rantala is known for his musical whimsy. It is unlikely that humour was on the syllabus when he studied jazz piano at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music. His first career step with the band Big Bad Family focussed on a joyful deconstruction of the standard genre. He pursued this direction with the trio Töykeät (which can best be translated as “ruffians”), which he founded in 1988; their eight albums have gone down in Finnish jazz history as the most successful and humorous piano trio discs. 

After a good 20 years of this concept, it was time for something new in 2008. In addition to the New Trio with guitarist Marzi Nyman and beatboxer Felix Zenger, Rantala tried out a wide variety of line-ups between jazz, classical, rock and pop before finally finding his way to solo piano with the album Lost Heroes in 2014. Since then, Rantala has also recorded duos with saxophonist Jukka Perko and guitarist Ulf Wakenius, and has repeatedly returned to the trio line-up: in the String Trio with Adam Bałdych on violin and Asja Valčić on cello, with bassist Lars Danielsson and drummer Peter Erskine, or in the HEL Trio, with Anton Eger on drums and Conor Chaplin on bass, which was highly praised for its recently-released album Tough Stuff. But he has always remained true to his solo work, documented on three further albums – with his John Lennon homage My Working Class Hero from 2015 becoming an international hit and his definitive breakthrough. 

Rantala is eclectic; his oeuvre embraces much of music history, from Johann Sebastian Bach to John Lennon, from George Gershwin, Keith Jarrett and Leonard Bernstein to rock and pop – as summarised in the album title My History of Jazz from 2012. He also writes musicals, operas and other works in the classical genre. Rantala's style is unmistakably personal. His humour is often evident in the titles of his classical works. One of his piano concertos, recorded with the Tapiola Sinfonietta, is called Concerto in Concerto in G♯ΔA♭; his two operas are called Sanatorio Express and Die Zaubermelodika – the latter was commissioned by the Komische Oper Berlin as a sequel to Mozart’s Die Zauerflöte. 

For eight years, from the age of 20, Możdżer played in the band, which is still enjoys cult status today; during this time, he was honoured six times by the magazine Jazz Forum as best pianist, twice as musician of the year and once with the most famous Polish music prize, the Fryderyk. This was the start of a career that lead him to play with greats from the USA like guitarist Pat Metheny, trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophonist Arthur Blythe, saxophonist and pianist Archie Shepp and electric bass-player Marcus Miller. 

It also lead him to the ACT label, for which he recorded the albums Komeda and Polska in 2011 and 2013. These explorations of the holy figures and traditions of Polish music – from Frédéric Chopin to Witold Lutosławski and to founding father of Polish jazz and pop, Krzysztof Komeda – demonstrate his unmistakable individual style,  which brought Możddżer his international breakthrough and his conquest of the pop charts in his home country. His popularity is partly a result of Możdżer's trademark stylistic flexibility. As a romantic and an unconventional storyteller at the piano, he is always recognisable as a chromaticist committed to melody. He revels in trills, suggestions and embellishments, and bathes in tonal colours. In his playing, classical accomplishment meets experimental imagination, humorous improvisation and the melismas of the Slavic musical tradition. 

Możdżer is the long-term partner of both violinist Adam Bałdych and Swedish cellist and bassist Lars Danielsson. He has worked with early music ensemble Holland Baroque, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, death metal band Behemoth, rappers L.U.C and Eldo, and the rock band Myslovitz. Możdżer can also be considered the legitimate successor to the founding father of Polish jazz and pop, Krzysztof Komeda, because he has added a great deal of theatre and film music to his 100 or so albums with his own and other projects: from recordings for Jan Kaczmarek's Oscar-winning soundtrack to Finding Neverland to various theatre scores for directors Wojciech Kościelniak, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Jan Englert and others; from silent film scores to his own opera, Immanuel Kant; from film scores for Wiktor Grodecki’s The Insatiability, Michale Boganim’s Wounded Earth to the multi-award-winning soundtrack to Maciej Pieprzyca’s Icarus – The Legend of Mietek Kosz. 

During his engineering studies, Privat played in local clubs and joined a trio with Maxime Delporte on bass and Alyss Kalbez on drums. With his engineering degree in his pocket, he moved to Paris, where he met key figures in the scene, like trumpeter Stéphane Belmondo and bassist and drummer Rémi Vignolo. In search of a place in the jazz world, he took part in the Montreux Jazz Festival piano competition in 2008 and the Martial Solal competition in 2010, where he reached the semi-finals. His debut album Ki Koté was released the following year. 

Privat has developed and refined his own idiom since then: transporting the musical tradition of the Beguine and Zouk – music and dance styles from the French Antilles that he grew up with – into modern jazz. His 2013 concept album Tales of Cyparis was inspired by the story of Louis-Auguste Cyparis, a sailor imprisoned for a bar or street brawl.  While in the prison cellar, Cyparis became the only one of over 30,000 inhabitants of Saint-Pierre, which at the time was the capital of Martinique , to survive the volcanic eruption of Mont Pelée in 1902. He was subsequently hired by the Barnum circus. In 2015, Privat joined master percussionist Sonny Troupé from Guadeloupe to record the duo album Luminescence, which was awarded the Frank Ténot Prize for new French discoveries by Victoires du Jazz. The following year, the internationally-acclaimed album Family Tree was released on the ACT label. 

Privat has also appeared on albums by trumpeter Franck Nicolas, guitarist Yosuke Onuma and singer Manu Le Prince, and has worked with greats such as singer Catia Werneck, drummer Paco Séry and saxophonist Guillaume Perret. He was part of Lars Danielsson’s ensemble for the album Liberetto, and still plays in various bands with Guadeloupe-born, New York-based saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart. Since 2019, Privat has also led his own trio with Chris Jennings on bass and Tilo Bertholo on drums. 

“I want to be surprised by what I do,” says Privat. This also eventually led him to solo piano. In 2022, he released Yonn, his first solo album, characterised by his experiences during the pandemic. On the album, he also sings for the first time. The solo improvisation album Nuit & Jour, recorded in Marseille, was released last year. Privat has just been awarded the Django Reinhardt Prize.