Kraków Concerts Schedule 27-05-02.06

I have never imagined that it takes so much time to scan a 500 GB hard drive to find bad sectors :) I did manage to get back all of the lost data, but my computer is unavailable for service these days, I can't seem to force myself to write on other pc. Fortunately the there's no shortage of live events (the Mikrokolektyw and Shipp / Mateen duos last week were absolutely brilliant). Here are my propositions for the following days.


28/29.05 Opalińska & Whates at PIEC'Art
The polish-british duo's music is wonderfully intimate and subtle. You can read more about it in my review of their debut album "Lumere".

20.05-26.05 Concerts Schedule

The number of live events is an effective distractin of late but I hope I'll manage to get some writing done these days. The following week's main event is undisputedly the duo concert with Matthew Shipp and Sabir Mateen, but it's not the only one worhty of the attention.

20.05 Shoshana at Alchemia

a dynamic alternative rock duo straight from Tel Aviw. It's gonna be LOUD!!!

13.05-19.05.13 Concerts Schedule

It was an extremely busy week (no time to write, each day busy with a concert). I'd say Wovoka (tantalizingly psychodelic folk-blues) and Hucpa (double drum jewish wedding fiesta with alto sax leading on the ballroom) were the definite highlights.

Krakow remains a stage of student's festival for another week so pleny of live events this week as well, but not as many if you look for alternative jazz. The blues fans should be well satisfied though:

13.05 Adam Baldych Imaginary Quartet at Lizard King (part of the "Starzy i Mlodzi czyli Jazz w Krakowie festival")
A dynamic violin player and energetic quartet whose sound is deeply inspired by the modern jazz New York scene.

06.05 - 12.05 Concerts Schedule

Another busy week ahead of us. Krakow becomes for the next fortnight or so a mix of student festivals with each university holding its own program and many open air concerts featuring indie, rock, pop polish (and some international) stars will be presented. Enjoy as much as you can and want to, personally I'd like to bring your attention to the traditionally jazz/alternative independent schedule:

06.05 and 7.05 Shock Wave at PIEC'Art

I wrote briefly about group's jam at Literki couple of months ago, the dynamic presents some of the most active young musicians in Krakow with Dominika Rusinowska on violing and Slawek Pezda on saxophone as the leading voices. Mix of free, modern, punk, rock and more. 

07.05 Rara Avis at Alchemia

Rara Avis in the words of Ken Vandermark, featured in the grup led by a cast of young reprentants of Italy:

“I'm extremely excited about the group for a number of reasons: the band is a cooperative, without a designated leader, everyone's ideas and playing caries equal weight; the Italian members of Rara Avis are part of a new generation of players who are very knowledgeable about contemporary developments in improvised and composed music; and the fields of sound the ensemble explores are unique in terms of texture, velocity, dynamics- the traditional hierarchies of what instrument is "melodic," what instrument supplies "rhythm," are so turned on their head and blurred that it is often impossible to identify the creative sources at work during a performance. These things, and many others that the group incorporates into its music, make Rara Avis a special band for me, and most certainly for fans of modern improvised music”.

interview with Tomasz Dabrowski. Chapter 03

Here's the last piece of the interview with Tomasz Dabrowski. Big thanks to Tomasz for the talk and to Malgorzata Michalska who did come up with the idea for the meeting.

(you play a very specific instrument, you call it „balkan horn”, can you tell more about it?)

This is an instrument I got at a bargain price from a gentleman in a village near Łódź city. I found it on allegro [a popular auction website], no one wanted to buy it. I saw it and got very intrested – it looks very old, and most of all it looks very strange, with a huge bell for example.

I turned it has a very different sound as well. There are those technical matters I'm not really an expert in. If you play trumpet and flugelhorn, you have to use two different mouthpieces. Same thing if you play in a small combo or you play in big band. If you play lead part you have to use a shallower mouthpiece so the sound would be more upfront, you're leading the section, the whole big band as a metter of fact. I'm really terrible at it, and that is for the biggest advantage of my balkan horn, I can easily play with the same mouthpiece I use on the trumpet but the sound is very different, ambitus is larger, the articulation is different.

The way this is instrument is built nobody can tell me what it is. I know it's from the 60s, I even wrote to the manufacturer but they were of no help as well. It's very fragile, you could crush it in your hands, if you hit it gives away more of a „plastic” sound rather than „brassy”. It allows you to play also with the tuning. It's a sort of a laboratory, you can always experiment with new sounds.