Underwater Consciousness Karja Hauptmann Duo

• 1 Uncharted disagreements on points agreed 14:36
• 2 Slap me or we'll both drown; then we can hold hands on the surface 06:21
• 3 Sand heaves from the lacunae of our abyssal plain 08:32
• 4 In the trenches of tenebrosity we rediscover despair in pairs 04:42
• 5 Where there were two, is now one; it's just us now 03:39
• Total Runtime 37:50

Info for Underwater Consciousness

Karja Hauptmann Duo, the collaboration between celebrated pianists Kirke Karja and Felix Hauptmann, is set to release their debut album, Underwater Consciousness, on the 27th of June 2025, via Boomslang Records and will be available on vinyl and digital download. Blurring the boundaries between free improvisation and instant composition, Underwater Consciousness captures the duo’s exploration of textural depth, rhythmic complexity, and layered time structures on a delicate yet captivating piano dialogue. The music emerges from a shared rhythmic sensibility, drawing listeners into immersive auditory landscapes filled with both exigency and introspection.

The album was recorded on the 4th of January 2024, at the LOFT, Cologne. After an intensive day of rehearsing and discovering new textures and musical ideas, Hauptman and Karja recorded in just an hour the entirety of the music in the album. Each piece unfolds naturally, shaped by their improvisational confabulation and intuitive artistic connection, in which humour and playfulness is present.

“The recording shows depth and urgency—both are core values in our work.” (Felix Hauptmann)

The release concert will bring the album’s labyrinthine sonic world to life in an intimate and dynamic setting.

Kirke Karja, piano
Felix Hauptmann, piano

Recorded at LOFT studios, Köln
Engineered by Stefan Deistler
Mix & Mastering by Christian Heck

Kirke Karja
(born 1989) has studied in Estonian Academy of Music classical piano, jazz music and she did her doctoral studies about composition techniques in contemporary jazz music. She is working as a composer, pianist, actor and is the chairman of the board at Estonian Jazz Federation.

Since 2016 Kirke has had around 150 concerts outside of Estonia, in last years also at the cutest European jazz festivals and venues: La Dynamo, Punkt @ Banlieues Bleues, Punkt @ Kristiansand, Nasjonal Jazzscene Victoria, Jazzfest Berlin, Donau115, 12points, Tampere Jazz Happening, Vossa Jazz, Jazzahead!, Jazzkaar, Raahe Jazz Festival, Sile Jazz, Parma Jazz, Jazz Jantar, Katowice JazzArt Festival, Sõru Jazz, Estonian Music Days, Jazz Middelheim, Luxembourg Jazz Rallye, Magnet Festival Wiesbaden, Jazz Forum St Etienne, Sõru Jazz, Jazzweek Cologne, Winterjazz Köln, Unterfahrt Munich, Loft Köln, Darmstadt Jazzforum, Südtirol Jazzfestival etc. Most of them are visited with trio Karja/Renard/Wandinger.

As a composer she has had commissions by European Broadcast Union Jazz Orchestra, Pärnu City Orchestra, Latvian Radio Bigband, Machine á trois (Luxembourg), Ludensemble etc.

Felix Hauptmann
born in 1993, is a jazz musician (piano, synthesizer, composition).

He has been studying at the Cologne University of Music and Dance since 2012. He works both as a soloist and in several ensembles. In 2009, he founded the HNK Trio with Conrad Noll and Fabian Künzer, with whom he won the Deutschlandfunk Studio Prize as part of the 2011 National Youth Jazz Festival and first place at the European Jazz Awards in Kaiserslautern. The trio has recorded two albums. He recorded the albums "Foliag" (2017) and "Yonic" (2019) with Laura Totenhagen's trio and quartet, respectively. He has also been a member of the quartets of Sabeth Pérez and Martin Gasser. He was part of the "Solomons" project with Lennart Allkemper and Konstantin Döben and the sextet of Peter Hedrich. In 2016/2017, he was a member of the German Federal Jazz Orchestra. Outside of ensembles, he has collaborated with a variety of musicians, including Gerd Dudek, Manfred Schoof, Jörg Achim Keller, and Reza Askari. In 2020, he released the album "Talk" with his own quartet, and in 2022 and 2023, he released two albums each with the collaborative jazz piano trio "Percussion."

He also won prizes for best soloist at the 2015 International Jazz Competition and the Horst and Gretl Will Scholarship for Jazz/Improvised Music in 2022.

This album contains no booklet.