Forty-eight years separate these two “headstrong” (DIE ZEIT) musicians, but musically they could not be closer. Saxophonist Heinz Sauer, a great and highly influential figure in post-war west German jazz, and Michael Wollny, the big discovery in German jazz in 2005 were born in 1932 and 1978 respectively. One of them grew up in a time when jazz was the expression of the awakening after the Second World War and a disastrous dictatorship, the other one in an age, in which anything goes, and musical symbols have become ambiguous and iridescent. One of them relatively bald, the other with a mop of hair, but both blessed with a unique musical mind and great intensity.

Sauer’s tone has been compared with flowing, molten lava, a tone that erupts with archaic force and glistens in a multitude of nuances. Wollny sometimes explodes behind the piano, sending sound-splinters that come from a truly free universe flying in all directions. His is a language that is unburdened by deliberations about tonality or atonality. And when the duo starts to play, we can feel the mental and emotional connection immediately. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.