Roman Rofalski

Roman Rofalski is a brilliant, versatile and thoughtful pianist. His new album Sonar surprises, teases, soothes and inspires. The trio: Roman Rofalski on piano, Johannes Felscher on double bass and Ruben Steijn on drums, complement each other with subtle skill and sensitivity.

“I'm from Stadthagen, a small town near Hanover," explains Roman, who composed the music for the new album, released by BERTHOLD records. “My parents are both teachers who have never been professional musicians but who have always been interested in music. When I was ten years old, they gave me the choice of learning guitar or piano. I decided on the latter, as my father strummed a few chords as a hobby, and I wanted naturally to be different.”

Roman as a teenager played rock music, produced techno and wanted really to be a star in these musical genres. Highly talented, he went on to study classical piano at the Hanover University for Music, Drama & Media. “At that time, as was often the case, I studied classical piano but listened to jazz music. Bill Evans was my great idol. Now, as I work more in the field of improvised music, I hear a lot of classical pieces.” An accomplished classical concert pianist by his mid-twenties, he later took his jazz masters in New York. As Roman explains: “I had a bit of a crisis with classical piano playing. As a concert pianist you have to be one hundred percent behind any music you interpret. In the search for a musical form of expression you have to include your own background. My roots lie with Shostakovich, Schubert and Beethoven, but also with Herbie Hancock, Foo Fighters and Electronic Dance Music. From there it is a long process that is still going on in my own music and that is still something special. This is not the usual path for a jazz musician. I search for new challenges and am ever curious in incorporating the different styles.”

Roman, who teaches at the Rostock College of Music, has performed at the Leverkusener Jazztage, Saxophon Festival Seligenstadt and the Jazzralley Düsseldorf amongst many other prestigious venues.

He is a member of the “ohton-ensemble for contemporary music” and has just returned from an extensive solo-tour for Schimmel Pianos in China.