Women Composers Concert | Johanna Summer: Jazz Piano Sun, March 13, 2022

Women Composers Concert | Johanna Summer: Jazz Piano

In the set "Schumann Kaleidoscope," the 1995-born jazz pianist Johanna Summer spans a wide range of pieces from Robert Schumann's "Album für die Jugend" and "Kinderszenen." Performing selections from the program "From Clara (Schumann) to Carla (Bley)", Summer succeeds in "jazzing up" works by various female composers in close relation to the original pieces - but always in an unbelievably delicate way that hardly allows "real" boundaries to be drawn between classical music and jazz.

Johanna Summer lives in Dresden and Berlin. She received several awards at the national competition "Jugend musiziert" and "Jugend jazzt". She studied jazz piano under Matthias Bätzel and Michael Fuchs until 2018 and regularly performs in various formations - both as a chamber musician and as a soloist. In 2018, she received the special prize for composition of the Biberach Jazz Prize. A few months later, she was the first solo artist ever to be awarded the "Young Munich Jazz Award", and in 2019 she won the 2nd prize of the "EASTplugged Junior Award" and the soloist prize of the Young German Jazz Award.

Besides concert tours that took her to various European countries as well as Russia, Israel and the USA, she gained experience working with artists including Jiggs Whigham, Rainer Tempel, Steffen Schorn, Sebastian Studnitzky, Randy Brecker, Milan Svoboda and Richard DeRosa.

Programme

Part one– Schumann Kaleidoskop

Johanna Summer approaches works by Robert Schumann as the basis for pianistic imaginative journeys. Her mature, far-sighted sense of dramaturgy, dynamics, tension and atmosphere results in her very personal interpretation of familiar Schumann-pieces.

Part two– From Clara to Carla - Women composers improvised

Mel Bonis – Phoebé Op. 30
Clara Schumann – Caprice a la Bolero Op. 5
Carla Bley – Ida Lupino
Marian McPartland – Twilight World
Germaine Tailleferre – Pastorale D-Dur