Michael Wollny Trio take flight with Kings Place fireworks

He's visited these shores over the last decade but it's been infrequent, far from keeping pace with his increasing prominence as a trailblazer among the best European jazz pianists.

It's been the development of his trio featuring longtime drummer and former [em] bandmate, Eric Schaefer and more recently recruited Swiss bassist Christan Weber that has enabled Wollny's insatiable imagination to dig deep into the corners of folk, film and classical music as well as alternative rock, to unearth some unusual and mostly beautiful music. Much of which can be heard on the trio's breakthrough album Weltentraum, which scooped Jazzwise's album of the year in 2014. A five-star performance at Ronnie Scott's and a brilliant mid-afternoon set at the 2014 Cheltenham Jazz Festival number among Wollny's curiously low-profile UK skirmishes to date, so it was a long-overdue concert hall billing as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival that proved just why he and his band deserve all the praise, accolades and album sales they are getting back home.

Fast rising UK pianist Andrew McCormack setting the bar high with his inventive set of richly hued and technically-assured solo pieces, but the pianistic fireworks had only just begun. Yet there's nothing obvious about the way this three-piece approaches their material – a fluttering freeform dialogue of cymbal scrapes, pinched and bowed bass whinnies and strumming inner-strings on the piano, intro the set with a gossamer-light cloud of sound. Soon, however, it's a broiling ostinato that's passed back and forth between bass and piano, Schaefer always kicking at the heels with his ever-percolating snare. When things reach their peak Wollny's fingers are a blur, fluttering across rhythms and harmonies with incredible lightness, before literally digging his elbows and arms into the keys, smashing dissonance as the only answer to what he wants to say.

Weber is a delight on the bass, perfectly flexible as either foundation or fellow combatant, grabbing his bow to create throaty drones or high-pitched anguished cries; pizzicato-ing from low to high with a wry sense of timing. It's worth noting that for every studio album Wollny has released, a live counterpart soon appears, with both Weltentraum and Nachtfahrten getting a double release, as the live setting for this pianist and his trio is so different to the studio – the latter providing a deeply contemplative space for exploring the delicacies and nuances of his musical world – whereas live this is where this band flies free as birds. It was a privilege to hear them soar.

– Mike Flynn

– Photos by Tim Dickeson