Tania Giannouli: Solo & Beyond

By Dan Ouellette I Apr. 29, 2025

“I am a musician born and raised in this country with the sound of the seas and landscapes that I carry with me,” says Giannouli of her Greek upbringing.

(Photo: Bjorn Comhaire)

While virtually unknown in the U.S., Tania Giannouli, born and based in Athens, stars as a genre-defying jazz piano maestra across Europe at various high-profile festivals including Jazztopad and Trondheim Jazzfest as well as at such impressive venues as Bimhuis in Amstersdam and both Flagey and Ars Musica in Brussels. But she’s most at home at the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Heidelberg, Germany, where she has annually offered new projects to the empathetic crowds fully prepared for her exploratory, unpredictable, complex music that is at once lyrical and urgent.

Giannouli first appeared at Enjoy in 2019 and then in 2022 was granted artist-in-residence status, which she shared with Swiss piano master Nik Bärtsch. They clicked in their artistic philosophies. The following year she and Bärtsch joined for an exhilarating duo Enjoy show. In the liner notes to her simply titled Solo album (her fifth recording for Rattle, a New Zealand-based label), Giannouli thanks Enjoy producer Rainer Kern for “giving me the space, inspiration, encouragement and confidence” in debuting her one-person show at Enjoy in 2020.

In 2024, again at Enjoy Jazz and in the wake of Solo, Giannouli intoxicated the anticipatory crowd with her scintillating 90-minute performance at the sold-out Friedenskirche church in Heidelberg.

With her classical training at Athenaeum Maria Callas Conservatory, a love of improvisational jazz, explorations of prepared piano and an inherent sense of her native Greek folklore, she revealed fresh versions of pieces from Solo, such as “Spiral,” “Novelette,” “Intone” and “Prelude.” She also rendered a solo version of her original “The Sea,” which was recorded on 2015’s Transcendence album with her five-member ensemble. Key to her flights were the prepared piano with such “in-the-box” objects as sheets of paper, small mallets, chimes, pieces of cloth and hardened gum. Two encores championed her profound and personal exercises in stretching the jazz guardrails.

The next morning, sitting in an executive suite off the lobby of the hotel, Giannouli talked about the previous evening’s triumph. “I don’t plan what to play ahead of time,” she says. “And while I’m playing, nothing is conscious. I don’t really think about what I’m playing, what comes next. Last night I did something I’ve never done before in concert — playing a rhythm on the singing bowls inside the piano. That was a surprise even to me. But overall, what I play is a little like being in meditation.”

As for playing prepared piano, she says that it has come into her repertoire over the last few years of playing solo shows. “I do it occasionally with my ensembles,” she says. “But I’ve really expanded it while solo. I’ve been involved in free improvisation for many years. When I was at school, I joined free improvisation bands with other students, and we did crazy things.”

As a soloist, Giannouli says the experience gives her great freedom and space to go on her personal journeys of vulnerability, truth and honesty. In the liner notes for Solo she writes: “Playing solo is … the most liberating thing ever. Being alone with the instrument gives me an incredible sense of freedom. And yet, there is nothing more demanding than a solo recital. I like the unpredictability of it all.”

Beyond solo shows, she and Bärtsch did a duo set at the London Jazz Festival last November at the prestigious Wigmore Hall.

She recalls the beginning of their artistic connection in 2022. But because of their artist-in-residency work, the pair didn’t have time for a spontaneous collaboration. That would have to wait a year.

“We had respect for each other’s music and the common interest in composed and structured music in a classical sense in combination with improvisation and jazz,” says Bärtsch. “We also thought it might make sense to work in advance to learn more about each other’s music and the approach to it. I was offered the opportunity to invite someone for a show at Moods jazz club in Zurich, in the neighborhood of my own club, Exile. So, I thought this might be a good preparation for the show at Enjoy Jazz.”

“It was very exciting,” says Giannouli. “Nik is one of my favorite artists. We have different musical languages, but the same desire in telling the story.”

When they started to work together, Bärtsch realized very quickly that Giannouli had excellent time feel that was crucial for him. “In combination with her classical training, this creates a very refreshing perspective,” he says. “We did not waste time with a lot of talking but immediately went into organizing the orchestration of the music with two pianos. The balance of sound, dynamics, phrasing and dramaturgy is quite delicate with two pianos.”

After the success of their Enjoy show, they decided to fill in the gaps of their busy schedules with a scattering of shows around Europe. Bärtsch is impressed. “Tania’s playing is natural and honest,” he says. “It seems to be nourished by her affinity to a floating state between tonal and experimental music. It sounds individual although it is influenced by cultural context and universal ingredients from the classical background. I experience Tania as one of the hardest working musicians I know. Very dedicated and hungry.”

In addition to fronting two trios, joining up with trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s new quartet and working in other duo excursions (recently with trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer at an invite-only private event during Enjoy), Giannouli settles in mostly at home, going it alone and journeying into the unknown. She is an improvisation genius who expands the piano’s range with that array of prepared piano objects tucked in the box. “I composed the music for Solo in just two days,” she says. “I could easily complete another in the same time frame.”

How does she categorize herself as an artist?

“I still cannot say that what I play is pure jazz,” she laughs. “It is some kind of jazz, so I guess I am a jazz artist who plays beyond genre. I have so many influences from the avant-garde world to contemporary composers like George Crumb. I don’t set out to play in the Greek folk tradition, but the music does influence me. All those melodies are in my head. My studies are purely in classical music. However, I am a musician born and raised in this country with the sound of the seas and landscapes that I carry with me. But there’s also something else going on. I’m not self-censoring about my influences. I believe that music is one.” EURO

Source link

Prev Article Next Article

Related Posts

Add Comment