Description
Of the many instruments that can be heard in Kowalski's recordings, the piano has always played a significant role. And so it is on his new album, My First Piano, that is being released on April 6, 2018 on the label MPS. These 10 piano pieces are described by the critic Max Dax in the liner notes as "little hybrids of finger exercises, doodling, aphorisms and the laconic. A bold, well-tempered piano player blurring the lines between classical and jazz."
The cover image of the baby photo on the piano was discovered by accident in an old family album. Kowalski went in search of the forgotten piano from his childhood and brought it back to Berlin some 30 years later.
"My earliest childhood memories are of lying curled up under the piano stool, listening to my mother playing Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Scriabin. There are not many places or things that feel like home to me. Our family is scattered all over the world and that's the only way I've ever known it. But having my old baby piano with me again, with its ivorywhite rounded keys, the decorated sound holes and the unpadded stool, just like back then-this all feels a bit like home."
