Michael Wollny is a german jazz pianist. He received his piano and violin tuition as a five year-old, and along with classical studies, improvisation was part of the curriculum from the very beginning.He became active throughout Germany, played in the BuJazzO (the national youth jazz orchestra), where tutors Walter Norris and John Taylor held free jam sessions with the young pianist, rather than practising big-band arrangements.The collaboration of three musicians as equals on a level playing field is the idea behind the trio [em], founded by Wollny in 2002 with bassist Eva Kruse and drummer Eric Schaefer. Something exciting is brewing here.The magazine Jazzthing writes: “Call it [em] sounds like an inventory of young perceptive jazz in 2005. Fresh, full of free flying influences, not populist. A thing of its own, set apart from the mainstream, diagonal, shifting, nervous, frantic, meditative, movement, slow motion, dada, hip-hop, bebop”.The German weekly DIE ZEIT declared [em] to be “the world’s most exciting piano trio”, and the British “Observer” is convinced: “This is the future of jazz". Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.