Some albums require time to mature and that is certainly true of 'Songs With Words' from Malakoff Kowalski. There is a global sense of this collection, which includes pianists Igor Levit, Johanna Summer and Chilly Gonzales, and it sits across many genres and none. The album features miniatures by classical composers coupled with sung poems by American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
The songs themselves are vibrant - literally, brimming with life - and they deftly combine all the global influences of Kowalski, a Berlin-based German-American composer and singer of Persian origin. It is particularly telling of the eclectic creative process that there are three different pianists helping the singer create this beautiful collection.
The songs themselves are vibrant - literally, brimming with life - and they deftly combine all the global influences of Kowalski, a Berlin-based German-American composer and singer of Persian origin. It is particularly telling of the eclectic creative process that there are three different pianists helping the singer create this beautiful collection.
Kowalski says: “It took about five years to birth these twelve songs. They were assembled from both famous and lesser-known miniatures by Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Aram Khachaturian, Maurice Ravel, Edvard Grieg, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre, Claude Debussy, and Gabriel Fauré. I kept unearthing timeless, intimate, vulnerable poems from Ginsberg’s oeuvre, and for some reason, again and again, these poems, with little or no reworking, functioned very naturally as song lyrics. The quiet, inner-directed vocals strictly followed the piano’s motifs and themes, while the piano parts, in turn, stuck to their original versions, with only the most imperceptible of alterations here and there.”
This album feels like a song cycle that crosses all the boundaries between jazz, pop and classical music. With Malakoff Kowalski (vocals) joined variously by Igor Levit, Johanna Summer and Chilly Gonzales (piano).
Take your pick of tracks - classical music combines with Ginsberg's lyrics to create a special, deliberate and evocative world of its own. Favourites change depending on the day I've listened, but 'Dry Old Rose' with Summer's accompaniment is the perfect place to start. The final, compelling track on the album is 'Awake' with Gonzales on piano duties and, for the sake of completeness, Levit's piano on 'The Weight of the World Is Love' shows the third, disparate piano style. Together, 'Songs With Words' is a collection that allows Kowalski's vocals to soar wonderfully about the three pianos.
Take your pick of tracks - classical music combines with Ginsberg's lyrics to create a special, deliberate and evocative world of its own. Favourites change depending on the day I've listened, but 'Dry Old Rose' with Summer's accompaniment is the perfect place to start. The final, compelling track on the album is 'Awake' with Gonzales on piano duties and, for the sake of completeness, Levit's piano on 'The Weight of the World Is Love' shows the third, disparate piano style. Together, 'Songs With Words' is a collection that allows Kowalski's vocals to soar wonderfully about the three pianos.
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