Pianist and composer Johannes Wallmann has recorded ten critically acclaimed albums as a leader and co-leads the band Precarious Towers. His latest album as leader was named a “Best of 2022 Album” by Something Else! and a “Best of Bandcamp, June 2022” album; Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express wrote: “Wallmann rises to precipitous heights in his 10th album, Precarious Towers, proving his ability to create a concept album, with extra-musical aspects streaming gracefully throughout.” DownBeat magazine has called Wallmann “a remarkable pianist and composer [whose] evocative compositions are brimming with melodic cogency and rhythmic pull,” has described his playing “confident, muscular and elegant,” and named his previous recording, Elegy for an Undiscovered Species, a “Best of 2021” album.
Wallmann is the inaugural holder of the Peterson Chair in Jazz Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to moving to Wisconsin in 2012, he spent five years teaching at the California State University East Bay near Oakland. Born 1974 in Germany and raised on Canada's Vancouver Island, Wallmann studied jazz piano and composition at Berklee College of Music (BM, 1995) with Ray Santisi and at New York University (MM 1997, PhD 2010) with Jim McNeely. His formative professional years were his twenties and early thirties in New York City, where he made his living playing jazz in jazz clubs, bars, department stores and concert halls. He has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, and Asia and and has recorded or performed with Brian Lynch, Ingrid Jensen, Ralph Alessi, Dayna Stephens, Pete Yellin, Gary Bartz, Seamus Blake, Howard Johnson, Gilad Hekselman, and Kevin Mahogany, among others. Wallmann is a Yamaha piano artist and the recipient of two Canada Council grants, a 2019 Emily Mead Baldwin Award in the Creative Arts, and a 2021 H.I. Romnes Fellowship.