In addition to the numerous instruments that can be heard on his recordings, the piano has always played a major role for Kowalski. This is also the case on his new album "My First Piano", which will be released on the label MPS on April 6,2018. Ten piano pieces on which the critic Max Dax writes in the liner notes:"Flattened, almost casually recorded miniatures, a small hybrid of finger practice, pastime, aphorism and laconization. A bold, well-tempered piano player on the borderline between classical and jazz." The baby photo on the piano, which can be seen on the record cover, was a coincidental discovery in an old family album. Kowalski started looking for the lost piano from his childhood and after thirty years he brought it back to Berlin. In my earliest childhood memories I lie curled up under the piano stool and listen to my mother playing Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Scriabin. There aren't many places or things that feel like home to me. Our family is scattered all over the world - I don't know it any other way. But to have my old baby piano back with me, with the ivory-white rounded keys, the decorated sound holes and the unpadded stool, just like before - all this feels a bit like at home.
