Michael Wollny & Vincent Peirani - Tandem (2016) [HDtracks]

Impromptu meetings can have far-reaching consequences. German pianist Michael Wollny and French accordionist Vincent Peirani quite literally got to know each other on stage during the ACT20 Jubilee Night at the “New Morning” club in Paris in 2012. Before performing together that night, they had exchanged little more than a peremptory handshake. However, those who heard their first spontaneous jam as a duo certainly won’t have forgotten the sheer excitement, and it has certainly stayed in the minds of both of the musicians. “It was like we used to play for decades together! No need to talk, no need to look at each other, we just breathed together…” Wollny is also full of praise for his colleague: “With Vincent you can roam freely across a whole gamut of styles and moods, and nothing gets in the way. You can quite simply chuck anything in his direction, and he will absorb it, transform it and give it straight back to you. It’s like a version of tennis on fast forward, with the balls coming in from all directions.” After that first meeting, Peirani immediately sent Wollny an email. He wrote: “I’ve attached a recording of last night. Have a listen. I’d really like you to play on my next album.” And that is indeed what transpired: Wollny became part of the trio for Peirani’s first ACT album, “Thrill Box.” As Die Welt said of that CD: “The searching and probing for contrapuntal beauty, the uncommonly lyrical playing have what it takes to touch the heart and make one hold one’s breath.”
Both musicians made a name for themselves in the others homecountry: Wollny’s highlight was being awarded European Jazz Musician of the Year 2015 by the Académie du Jazz, which represents jazz journalists in France. It is worth noting that France’s home-grown stars normally make hardly any impact in Germany either. The statistics of Peirani’s touring schedule show why that is: he gives at least 150 concerts per year in his own country, which means he already has quite enough on his plate. That said, Peirani’s music has definitely struck a chord in Germany, and his performances have been greeted with huge enthusiasm. He was awarded the much-coveted ECHO Jazz 2015 for the best European Ensemble of the Year for his duo album with Emile Parisien “Belle Epoque,” and was the subject of two separate profiles on German national TV.
It has taken three years since “Thrill Box” for their next album project together to take shape. In the interim, the careers of both Peirani and Wollny have witnessed meteoric rises, more or less in parallel with each other. Both of them are considered all over Europe as the leading jazz musicians of their generation. What makes them stand out in particular is that they are extending the horizons of their instruments, that they strive to create ever-new fantasies in sound, and in doing so they are setting new paths for European jazz. The main German broadsheets have commented on this: Die Welt wrote that hearing Wollny’s playing definitely becomes “addictive.” In the UK, Jazzwise likened Wollny’s career to “a vortex of creativity pointing in a relentlessly upwards trajectory.” The British Observer stated that Peirani “breaks new ground for his instrument.” And his playing has been described by LondonJazz News as having “a magic, an aura, an other-worldliness.”