Supernova – Jakob Manz

On 27 January 2026, Jakob Manz walked onto the stage of the Alte Oper Frankfurt as the youngest Artist-in-Residence the house has ever appointed, not yet 25, and delivered the main event of his season to a sold-out hall of 2,600. Supernova is the document of that night. What it captures is not only a technical command that would be remarkable at any age, but a rarer thing: the ability to rise to the big occasion, and to do it with openness and gratitude rather than showmanship. The programme was built for the evening, and built around the people who shaped him. In duo with Michael Wollny, Manz shrinks the vast room to something almost private on Horace Silver’s “Peace”. With Kinga Glyk and with Nils Landgren, an artist he names as a formative influence, the collaborations are easy and unforced. And in two guest appearances with singers he shows two entirely different faces, lifting the roof in Max Mutzke’s “Welt Hinter Glas”, finding infinite tenderness in Sarah Connor’s “Ich wünsch dir”. That gift for playing alongside a voice connects him to one of his heroes, David Sanborn, remembered here in the very first sound of the album: a quote from “Butterfat” opening “Eyes of Crystals”. A review of the concert in the Frankfurter Rundschau loved the idea of Jakob Manz’s Supernova being ‘an exploding star… a sun bursting open.’ This album confirms that kind of radiance.