My First Piano

Description

Malakoff Kowalski was born in Boston to Persian parents, grew up in Hamburg, and now lives in Berlin. His first solo album, 'Neue Deutsche Reiselieder', was released in 2009, and the album 'Kill Your Babies - Filmscore For An Unknown Picture' was released in 2012. His first MPS album, 'I Love You', was released in 2015 - a blend of jazz, singer-songwriter music, and film music. In addition to the many instruments that can be heard on his recordings, the piano in particular has always played a key role for Kowalski. This is also the case on his album 'My First Piano'. Ten piano pieces, about which critic Max Dax writes in the liner notes: « Flattened miniatures, recorded almost casually, little hybrids of finger exercise, pastime, aphorism and laconicism. A bold and seasoned pianist, on the border between classical and jazz.« The baby photo at the piano that appears on the album cover is a chance discovery in an old family album. Kowalski set out in search of the missing piano from his childhood and brought it back to Berlin after thirty years. « In my earliest childhood memories, I am curled up under the piano stool and listening to my mother play Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Scriabin for me. There are not many places or things that resemble me. Our family is scattered all over the world - I don't know it any other way. But finding my old baby piano with me again, with its rounded ivory-white keys, its decorated sound holes and its unpadded stool, as before, makes me feel a little bit at home. Kowalski also works as a film and theatre composer. His stage music for "Parzival" and "Faust" recently took him to the Schauspielhaus in Cologne and the National Theatre in Stuttgart. Kowalski's piano music can currently be heard in cinemas in Lisa Langseth's film "Euphoria".