Sunday, June 30, 2013

Krakow Concert Schedule 01-07.07 (Jewish Culture Festival)

Krakow Jewish Culture Festival keeps you busy the whole next week. Lecturs, meetings, workshops, radio sessions, exhibitions and live music concerts.

before that just one alternative summer invite:

Sebastian Pikula from the Miazsz group is doing musical workshops for children, from Monday till Friday. Sounds like a lot of fun way to start the summer :) Bring your children and yourself, more details in the link.


Krakow Jewish Festival 2013

As the evening musical program goes consult Jewish Festival homepage.  Below you can find a short selection, make sure to check the whole program so you wouldn't miss anything.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Mikolaj Trzaska speaks about jewish music (part of the interview) - Krakow Jewish Culture Festival 2013 starts tonight!


In 90 minutes next edition of Krakow Jewish Festival starts, I'd like to remind on that occasion a part of an interview with Mikolaj Trzaska who, during the festival, will play with the Riverloam Trio (Olie Brice and Mark Sanders) as well as will conduct workshops (and hopefully participate in the midnight jam sessions? :)


obviously you can read the whole interview in the blog's archive.




To, wydaje mi się, wątek Twojej twórczości stosunkowo nowy, ale coraz ważniejszy, a zaczęło się od płyty Shofar z Raphaelem Rogińskim - jakie znaczenie ma dla Ciebie obecnie muzyka żydowska?

Historia jest bardzo podobna do tej, którą już opowiedziałem. Są rzeczy, przed którymi nie można się powstrzymać. Np. przed prowadzeniem samochodu należałoby siępowstrzymać od picia alkoholu, albo przy opiekowaniu się dziećmi racze nie powinno siępalić jointów. Ale akurat w sztuce, to jest miejsce, taka przestrzeń, gdzie ty, limitując się,bo oczywiście wszystko jest jakoś limitowane, ale możesz wędrować tam gdzie naprawdę pragniesz, to jest prawdziwa przestrzeń wolności.

Pomijając fakt, że muzyka żydowska ma dla mnie charakter tożsamościowy, pomijając toże to jest dla mnie od strony takiej osobistej, wewnętrznej, psychologicznej bardzoistotne. Myślę sobie, że my potrzebujemy, że ludzie potrzebują mieć coś takiego jakidentyfikacja z czymś dobrym, nie tylko w sobie, ale też w kulturze, w rodzinie. Jaksłuchasz muzyki, tej którą lubisz, to siłą rzeczy się z nią identyfikujesz, chcesz chodzić nakoncerty, chcesz być blisko tego, czujesz się przez to bogatszy, bo to w efekcie, czynicię bogatszym, tak na prawdę, rośniesz z tym. Słuchasz coraz więcej, jesteś corazwrażliwszy, coraz bardziej wymagający z drugiej strony. Ale to jest tak jak z książkami, żeciągle odwiedzasz światy, które dają ci rozwój.

It started with the cd „Shofar” with Rapahel Rogiński and It seems tome it's a relatively fresh aspect of your activity, yet it's becoming evermore important – what does the Jewish music tradition mean to you now?

Well the story is quite similar to the one I've just told you. There are certain things you cannot refrain yourself from. Forinstance one should not drink before driving, or when you babysit you shouldn't smoke joints. But in art, this is a place,a space where, limiting yourself cause everything is somehow limited, but you can go wherever you desire to go, this is truly a space of freedom.

Beside the fact that Jewish music is important to my identity, that it's something important to me on the most intimate,personal, psychological level. I think that people have a need to, we need to identify ourselves with something good, notonly within us but in culture, in family as well.
When you listen to the music you like, you start to identify yourself with it, you want to see the concerts, you want to beclose to it, it makes you feel enriched and in fact it does enrich you, you grow with it. You listen more, you're ever moresensitive to what you hear, you're also more demanding. It's like with the books – you constantly visit new worlds and it makes you grow.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Krakow Concert Schedule 24-30.06

This week is marked in a particular way, 28.06 starts the Jewish Culture Festival. Possibly the biggest Krakow annual event, that gathers thousands of people on the final feast of "Shalom" open air concert. Here are some suggestions on how to ease oneself onto the event-packed festival's schedule.

Krakow Jazz scene at Piec'ART
Piec'ART is a venue that focuses more and more on presenting young Krakow Jazz Scene, musicians connected to the jazz faculty of the Music Academy, among those many names already receiving wide attention, and more will follow.
This week of particulare interests are the two evenings with the adventurous Mateusz Gaweda Trio (24,25.06), as well as the quartet led by Dominika Rusinowska on violin (28.06), featuring very talented Szymon Zawadzki on the piano.



Sunday, June 16, 2013

Krakow Concert Schedule 17-23.06 (+ Wroclaw feature)

Without unnecessary fuss - here's where's to be and listen to next week :)

17.06 Jazz Jam Session at Harris Piano Jazz Bar
You can start off the week with a jam session led by the Krakow youth's finest Bartek Prucnal, Kuba Pluzek, Mike Parker and Dawid Fortuna (the video is from Mike Parker's Unified Theory where Bartek, Mike and Dawid play together as well).




17.06 Sebastian Zawadzki at Piec'ART
For somewhat of more intimate setting, a piano solo by Sebastian Zawadzki, member of Tone Raw quartet, whose debut cd surprised with mature sense of direction.

 


Sunday, June 9, 2013

Kraków Concerts Schedule 10-16.06

Krakow stays busy. Here are some events to fill your evening the next week.

(10.06 EDIT - I added two concerts I just found out about)

10.06 Alexander Markvart at Kawiarnia Naukowa
Russian multi-instrumentalist, according to the event descritpion, plays anything from and between radical improv, post-folk, minimal techo to noise and hardcore. (Thanks to Tomek Choloniewski for the news).


Sunday, June 2, 2013

Krakow Concert Schedule 02.06-09.06


Summer slowly creeps in and 'tis a season for festivals (unfortunately Krakow lost his big event - Selector moved to Warsaw). One needs to prepare for that events will be more intense and bigger yet the interlueds will get longer as well so there will be time to rest in between. Start to gather your strenghts. Green Zoo festival begins the festival season

02.06 Volume - Trzaska / Adam Pultz Melbye / Jorgensen at Alchemia
There's a small change in today's line-up, as Peter Friis Nielsen due to the illness had to cancel, Adam Pultz Melbye had to step in, a young musician who already played with Peter Brotzmann, Rudi Mahall and Trzaska among others. Good things are to be expected.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

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".


Saturday, May 18, 2013

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!!!

Sunday, May 12, 2013

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.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

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”.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

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.




Monday, April 29, 2013

Jazz Alchemist Radio 29.04.13 video playlist with Duke Ellington

As I still struggle to recover my hard disk data (well, actually I took the occasion to do some catching-up with a couple of tv series and the week was pretty busy concert-wise) no new plalist today is ready, but let us celebrate the birthday of the one of the aristocrats of jazz history - Duke Ellington, the bandleader, the composer, the songwriter, the pianist. Maestro.

enjoy and stay tuned.



Sunday, April 28, 2013

Concerts Schedule 29.04-05.05

It was a very intense week concert-wise. Due to the 1. and 3. may festivities, most people in Krakow are planning now a long careless weekend outside the city. The tourists though that are coming for the very same time to Krakow might consider those events a worthy wat to spend the evening:

29.04  Larz Reller Band at Alchemia
A kind of eastern europe folk-funk band that, I've never heard of them but the video below promises quite a positive vibe.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Orioxy - The other strangers [Unit Records]

Orioxy:
Yael Miller - vocals
Julie Campiche - harp
Manu Hagmann - double bass
Roland Merlinc - drums


Unit Records 2012




Orioxy played a very inspiring set couple of weeks ago in Krakow at Piec'ART club. In the centre of the musical picture there are two women and their artistic connection, the base of the quite particular instrumental line-up where voice and harp lead the way.

Yael Miller's voice is strong, clear, both sharp and sensual. Some of the song lyrics are written in hebrew which adds more layers to the ethereal, slightly exotic and mystic feel of the music. Julie's Hampiche harp is the cornertsone of the poetic, slighty dark and yet dreamy sound. The two are supported by irresistibly simple, earthy drum and bass grooves.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

interview with Tomasz Dabrowski. Chapter 02


Here's the second chapter of the interview with young polish trumpet player Tomasz Dabrowski.







(What is differences between musical scene in Denmark and Poland you can observe?)

Denmark has good balance. There's a strong mainstream circle as well as free. In Poland only now we're it starts to level. I don't know about classical music, but as far as jazz is concerned, mainstream jazz was dominating. What is called avant-guarde by many people was for present for a long time but always stood aside. But now it's coming to the light, I'm under impression that we're witnessing a big change, started around the last two years. So much more is happening, new musicians, projects, more concerts, festivals. Also on the international level, we're not scheduled anymore, there are no borders, you can play with whoever you want.