How can the idea of the Bauhaus be translated by jazz improvisers and other sound artists into previously "unheard" music?
Before: Alma Naidu & Band

Bauhaus in the opera house! This may be the headline when Michael Wollny & Co. stage the only German revival to date of his sensational program in Leipzig, which was first experienced in early 2019 at Berlin's Akademie der Künste to mark the centenary, along with a ceremonial speech by the German President to open the Bauhaus Year. Thus, after last year's Schnapszahlfestival, which was awarded the First German Jazz Prize as Festival of the Year, the Leipzig Jazz Days prove once again: they are not a home-baked construction site, despite ongoing external difficulties.

Wollny's work, structured in four movements with "werkstofflehre", "lyrisches kabinett", "spiel - zeug - arbeit", "bauhaustanz" and further subdivided into a total of 22 sections, effectively reflects his very own interpretation of bauhausgeometric-functional rigor and wild experimentation, coming from the past, rooted in the present and directed towards the future. References to Bach's structurally organized music (Art of Fugue) and Bauhaus-liketwelve-tone music by Josef Matthias Hauer as well as the early Anton Webern cannot be ignored.

Central to the performance are the live-sampled, not only uplifting sounds of the materials representing the Bauhaus aesthetic - wood, glass, metal, stone and woven fabric - sampled by Leafcutter John, but above all the contrasting harmonized interplay of Wollny's improvisations at the keys of the piano or harmonium and the hand-crafted tones of Wolfgang Heisig's machine-like punch-card-controlled phonola, in use during the Bauhaus period. A piano duo of a special kind, in which the pneumatic piano of the then renowned musical instrument maker Ludwig Hupfeld opens up a view of an often forgotten, historical side of the music city of Leipzig as a globally sought-after manufacturing location for pianos and music automatons. Emile Parisien's melody lines on the soprano are haunting, sometimes played in unison. Max Stadtfeld moves between fragile glockenspiel and turbulence of the unleashed bass drum.

Does Michael Wollny lead BAU.HAUS.KLANG from an anarchic mood of departure from the freedom of the moment of the past twenties into an inquisitive, respectful freedom leaving hopeful uncertainty?

By the way, but not incidentally: in exactly two months - on December 2/3, 2021 - Michael Wollny will play for the first time with the Gewandhausorchester zu Leipzig under its Gewandhauskapellmeister Andris Nelsons in the equally melodious house opposite, built 40 years ago, and premiere a piano concerto with room for keyboard fantasies by Bernd Franke!