He has long been a regular on the festival stage, whether as a member of the JazzBaltica ensemble or with his trio [em], which celebrated its first major successes here. Many memories are sure to come flooding back as you look forward to this exceptional pianist's concert.
Conversely, memories also play a major role in his music: ‘As an improviser, you often don't play the compositions, but rather your own memories of them. And these memories come back to you at the moment of playing and thus continue their existence in the here and now,’ says pianist and composer Michael Wollny. The three musicians are united by an almost inexhaustible musical vocabulary, an outstanding sensitivity when playing together and the ability to create new music of tremendous tension and dynamism from the moment.

Trumpeter Peter Somuah grew up in Ghana's capital Accra with the highlife, that mixture of current popular music and the older big band influences of the colonial era. ‘I picked up the trumpet when I was 14,’ he recalls. ‘I played highlife and Afrobeat in a marching band’. But a key experience turned Somuah's attention to a different jazz era: one day, a mate brought him a video of Miles Davis. Somuah was blown away: ‘I really wanted to be able to play like that. I had no idea what he did or how he did it, I just tried to hear the notes and imitate him.’ Somuah listened to all the phases of his role model and also studied the playing of Freddie Hubbard and Roy Hargrove. From then on, his aim was to explore a connection between Ghana and modern jazz with his own music.

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