Eine Winterreise

ACT’s flagship artist, in his most personal format. Wollny is one of European jazz’s most awarded and consistently selling pianists, called “one of European jazz’s premier pianist/composers” by The Guardian, praised for his “fantastic cross-genre musicianship” by Downbeat, and placed by Télérama in the lineage of Bley, Hancock, Jarrett, Mehldau, Svensson and Bollani.

A solo piano album is his most intimate and direct statement. Schubert’s Winterreise, one of the best-known song cycles in Western music, gives the release a second sales channel beyond jazz: classical buyers, retail placement, and classical and feuilleton media.

Pop references widen the reach. Motifs from Björk (“aurora”), Kate Bush (“snowflake”) and Louis Cole (“cloud of flies”) open the album to indie and pop listeners. Recorded on the grand piano at the 16th-century Reitstadel in Neumarkt, with no dynamic processing applied at all.