Living Ghosts [2LP] Vinyl

Living Ghosts is the trio's live sequel to Ghosts, the record The Times of London called the first Gothic jazz album, capturing one spring 2024 evening where Michael Wollny's own compositions became raw material for pure in-the-moment improvisation.

Wollny has been called the most exciting German jazz pianist of his generation, and his trio with bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Eric Schaefer built the original Ghosts around a genuinely haunting idea, that a musician performing an old composition is really performing their memory of it, and memories shift every time they resurface. That concept made for a record spanning Schubert's Erlkönig, Nick Cave, and Timber Timbre alongside Wollny's own darker originals. This live document takes that same material and lets it mutate further, four extended, medley-style pieces that blur where one composition ends and the next memory of it begins.

Nacht / Rufe in der Horchenden Nacht opens the set with exactly that dissolving structure, one piece bleeding into another rather than announcing a clean transition. Hauntology / In a Sentimental Mood / Little Person threads a jazz standard directly into the trio's own darker material, genuinely eerie in how naturally it moves between them. Willow's Song / This West closes the record on its most exploratory, sustained improvisation.

A studio concept about memory and repetition, tested live and proven to actually work that way in real time.

Tracklist

1. Nacht/Rufe in der horchenden Nacht
2. Hauntology/In a Sentimental Mood/Little Person
3. Hand of God/Lasse!
4. Willow's Song/This West