METAKOSMOS Tania Giannouli & Nik Bärtsch

• Nik Bärtsch (b. 1971), Tania Giannouli (b. 1977): Willow Wind:
• 1 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Willow Wind 04:31
• Then When:
• 2 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Then When 06:54
• Intonal:
• 3 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Intonal 08:56
• Electric Sea:
• 4 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Electric Sea 05:21
• Spiral Spirit:
• 5 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Spiral Spirit 07:27
• Glass Labyrinth:
• 6 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Glass Labyrinth 08:39
• Door 13 / Pink Athens:
• 7 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Door 13 / Pink Athens 13:01
• Bela’s Move:
• 8 Bärtsch, Giannouli: Bela’s Move 05:29
• Total Runtime 01:00:18

Info for METAKOSMOS

Tania Giannouli and Nik Bärtsch have played together as a piano duo since 2023. Whilst they are both open to influences and traditions, their skill and passion are also nourished by chamber music from the classical tradition, by the true spirit of folk music, by a dedication to the ritual structures of sacred music and by the innovative creativity and need for freedom that jazz demands. Their rhythmic energy is shaped by the legacy of Balkan music and by the rhythmic traditions developed on percussive instruments such as the cimbalom. The intellectual and musical backgrounds of these two artists have now merged naturally after long individual journeys and have created a shared sonic philosophy rooted in the present. The eight pieces on this album present an organic and effortless distillation of all of these aspects.

"This most beautiful album, one of the best of 2026, ends with «Bela’s Move», which sounds like a thoughtful yet uplifting homage to Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist Béla Bartók, adding to his folk-tinged melodies a modern spiritual-ritualistic rhythmic dimension, making it ascetic and ecstatic at the same time." - Eyal Hareuveni, salt-peanuts.eu

Tania Giannouli, piano
Nik Bärtsch, piano

Recorded April 2025 at BASF Feierabendhaus, Ludwigshafen, by Patrikc Destandeau
Mixed by Giorgos Kariotis
Mastered by Lars Dölle

Tania Giannouli
Greek pianist, composer, improviser and bandleader. She studied classical music (Piano Soloist and Composition diplomas) and Agriculture (MS on Food Technology, AUA). She explores jazz as the most creative music form and regularly employs improvisation in her practice. She makes jazz of the kind where improvisation is just the starting point and somewhere out there - or something deep inside - is the aim. Ιnspired by many different traditions and influences, her music and interdisciplinary projects span an impressive range of styles - a creative and borderless amalgamation of the global today’s reality.


Her genre-defying "open sound language" is often described as lyrical, inspired, complex, eclectic, intoxicating and highly original. As the Korean magazine Jazzspace has written: “This music invites the listener to dream of eternity.”

Her imaginative, explorative musical nature has led to five unique recording collaborations, all released on New Zealand's foremost art-music label, Rattle Records: Forest Stories (2012, with Portuguese wind player, Paulo Chagas), Transcendence (2015, featuring works composed for her Tania Giannouli Ensemble), Rewa (2018, a critically acclaimed, entirely improvised collaboration with traditional Maori instrumentalist, Rob Thorne), In Fading Light (2020, an unexpected trio with trumpet player Andreas Polyzogopoulos and oud player Kyriakos Tapakis) and Solo (2023, her first solo piano album, which has been gathering unanimously ecstatic reviews). All five albums received wide international acclaim and were included in numerous ‘Best of’ lists, with Transcendence cited as one of the most important Greek albums of the decade according to many Greek media. In 2024, she was one of the ten composers to contribute to the compilation album Piano Day Vol.3 (LEITER) after an invitation of Piano Day and Nils Frahm, its’ founder.

She has performed at several venues and festivals in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, UK, USA, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Norway, France, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Iceland, Turkey, Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Skopje, Morocco, Mauritius, Greece (among others: Jazzfest Berlin- Berliner Festspiele, Madrid International Jazz festival, Enjoy Jazz festival, EFG London Jazz Festival- Wigmore Hall, Flagey Piano Days, Brussels Jazz Festival-Flagey, Bozar, Gent Jazz festival, MA Musique Antique festival, Rudolfinum Prague, Trondheim Jazzfest, Maijazz, NYC Winter Jazz festival, Bergamo Jazz festival, Roma Jazz festival, Bimhuis, Ars Musica, Marseille Jazz festival des Cinque Continents, November Music, Onassis Stegi, Venezia Jazz festival, Pisa Jazz festival, Gaume festival, Skopje Jazz festival, NFM Wrocław, NDR Jazz Series, The Roulette - Brooklyn, Piano Days Copenhagen, Harpa concert hall for Reykjavik Jazz festival, Paris jazz festival, Ystad Winter jazz festival, Gaume jazz festival, Cerkno Jazz festival, Munsterland festival, Handelsbeurs, Morgenland festival, Jazz in the Park, Lecce Piano Festival, Fano Jazz By The Sea festival, Jazzahead, Mamajaz, Zomer Jazz Fiets tour, Borusan Sanat, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, Catania Jazz festival, Synch festival, Thessaloniki Concert Hall and more), but also in special projects like the demanding site-specific concert "634 minutes inside the volcano", where she-together with 14 more musicians- improvised for more than 10 hours inside the crater of Nisyros' island active volcano.

She is much involved in mixed media and her music for video, documentaries and film has travelled to many festivals, museums, galleries and Biennales worldwide. Her concert music has been performed by the Camerata/Armonia Atenea String Orchestra, Dissonart Ensemble, the Athens Youth Orchestra and the Galaxy String Quartet.

Giannouli is the recipient of many accolades and prizes: In 2026 she was included in the main category "Pianist of The Year" in the 74th Downbeat's Annual Critics Poll, in 2025 she was voted as “Rising Star Pianist of the Year” in the 73rd Downbeat’s Annual Critics Poll, being the first and only Greek musician entering these prestigious lists, in 2023 Tania was honoured by the Greek International Women Awards (GIWA) as a visionary individual who has made a significant impact in Arts and Culture and in 2021 she was nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis alongside pianists Tigran Hamasyan and Shai Maestro. The annual critic‘s poll Top Jazz, which is held by the Italian magazine Musica Jazz since 1982 (one of the most important polls in Europe) proclaimed her New International Talent for the year 2023 (premio Gian Mario Maletto). She is often invited to speak about her work, educate the next generation and participate as an artist-in-residence in various contexts. In autumn 2022 she was the artist in residence, together with Nik Bärtsch at Enjoy Jazz Festival.

She is currently collaborating with highly regarded musicians of the jazz international scene: Nils Peter Molvaer (in duo), Nik Bärtsch (in duo), Arve Henriksen (in duo), Maria Pia De Vito ( The Book of Lost Songs), Michele Rabbia and Daniele Roccato (Hemera), Amir ElSaffar (AES New Quartet), Reginald Mobley (Flowers of Stone, in duo), Sun Mi Hong (in duo). Her solo piano concert was premiered at the Kunsthalle Mannheim and has been ever since highly praised by leading magazines as Jazzwise and Downbeat. Several concerts of her were broadcasted by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, NDR, WDR, SWR, RTBF, rbbKultur, Klara and ERT.

Giannouli is a mentor in the EU-funded AEC–ECSA–EJN–JMI Mentorship Program and is increasingly invited as workshop leader in academic music departments such as at Columbia University, NY, USA and Ionian University, Corfu, Greece.

Nik Bärtsch
Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch was born in 1971 in Zurich, where he still lives. He took piano and percussion lessons from the age of 8 and subsequently studied at the city’s Musikhochschule and university, simultaneously freelancing in diverse bands, “playing everything from fusion to free-funk, and all kinds of extroverted jazz”.

As Bärtsch’s interest in composition grew and he immersed himself in the practices of John Cage and Morton Feldman, his attraction to live jazz waned: “I just didn’t see the sense of it any more, for me as an instrumentalist”. In 1997 he created an acoustic group, Mobile, which “develops integral musical concepts within a musical framework”. Continuum, with an “extended” version of the Mobile ensemble is scheduled for Spring 2016 release on ECM.

The band Ronin (named after the freelance warriors in Japanese history who served no master) was born in 2001 out of Bärtsch’s desire for a group that could also work in the clubs and “play with more power”. The pianist has described the band’s work as “Zen-funk” and “ritual groove”: “Our music is somewhere between jazz and modern composition, progressive pop, ritual music, groove music in general”. Writer Michel Mettler has characterised the group’s aesthetic as “creating the maximum effect by minimum means”: phrases and motives are repeated, combined and layered, creating shifting, complex rhythmic patterns which typically build slowly over time with overwhelming dramatic impact.

Ronin has released three studio albums on ECM to date, Stoa (2006), Holon (2008) and Llyrìa (2010), as well as a double CD, Live (2012), which anthologises a suite of concert performances from their appearances around the world between 2009 and 2011, a collection which reveals its own inner logic and dramaturgy.

“This music draws its energy from the tension between compositional precision and the self-circumvention of improvisation. From self-implied restriction stems freedom. Ecstasy through asceticism.” (Nik Bärtsch)

Booklet for METAKOSMOS