Kirke Karja is an Estonian pianist, composer, scholar (her doctoral studies focused on composition techniques in contemporary jazz music), actor, and chairman of the board at the Estonian Jazz Federation. Felix Hauptmann is a German, Cologne-based pianist, composer, and educator, whose work, especially with his piano trio Percussion, suggests irreverent, almost abstract possibilities for this old format.
Underwater Consciousness (borrowing its title from a poem by Maria Filippou) documents the free improvised duo of Karja and Hauptmann, both playing on grand pianos and facing each other at the LOFT in Cologne, in a live, one-hour session in January 2024, after only one day of intensive rehearsals. Karja described the improvisation exercises that informed the live recording session and were meant to push their creative
