Seifert Night in Serbia
As a part of Seifert Night! The best of Polish jazz the audience will listen:
27th of October 2022 Belgrade Jazz Festival 2022: Dominik Wania
4th of November 2022 Pancevo Jazz Festival 2022: EABS
The Zbigniew Seifert Foundation was established in 2010 for the dissemination of its patron’s music and legacy, the support of young artists performing improvised music on bowed string instruments, and the promotion of Polish jazz abroad.
The most important event organised by the Foundation so far is the Seifert Competition www.seifertcompetition.com. Apart from cash prizes, we strive to support our prize winners in their musical careers by holding their concerts in Poland and abroad as well as having their music released.
In 2021 despite obstacles related to the pandemic, we have managed to organise the 1st Seifert Jazz Days festival and inaugurate the vastly conceived project called Seifert Nights - The Best of Polish Jazz. Belgrade Jazz Festival is our project’s first partner, and we are proud to be able to hold such a substantial presentation of the Polish jazz scene in Belgrade, all under the patronage of Zbigniew Seifert and with his name in the title.
Zbigniew Seifert is one of the most eminent figures in Polish jazz history and one of the key personalities in the world’s jazz violin scene. Despite his short life (1946-1979) his uncompromising effort at the completion and authentic presentation of his music has yielded impressive fruits, and though his output is not large, we are happy to promote the timeless value of his legacy.
Belgrade Jazz Festival and the Zbigniew Seifert Foundation invite you to the second concert of the Seifert Night, the best of Polish Jazz!
SEIFERT NIGHT, the best of Polish jazz: Dominik Wania, 27 October 2022, Belgrade Jazz Festival
Pianist Dominik Wania has joined the elite group of artists recording for ECM Records. "Lonely Shadows" is the first ever solo album of a Polish musician released by this most prestigious jazz label in the world.
After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet ('Unloved', 'Three Crowns'), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disciplines makes Dominik Wania one of the most distinctive players of his generation. Lonely Shadows is a testimony to his creative originality as well as a significant addition to ECM’s celebrated line of solo piano recordings. Produced by Manfred Eicher.
Last autumn, during a two-day recording session in Lugano, Dominik Wania decided to go for full improvisation. He arrived at the concert hall of the Swiss radio without any previously prepared works or even sketches of the compositions. While listening to his album "Lonely Shadows" we therefore witness a process of creation that is completely unique.
Dominik Wania’s fans had to wait seven years for his second album. So much time has passed since his famous debut - the album "Ravel" recorded with Max Mucha (bass) and Dawid Fortuna (drums), which was showered with awards, including two Fryderyk statuettes (in the Jazz Album of the Year and Jazz Debut of the Year categories) and the TVP Kultura "Gwarancje Kultury" award. This time as well the leading Polish jazz pianist does not give up on the clear influence of classical composers such as Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Aleksandr Scriabin or Erik Satie. Wania's music is a bridge between pure freedom of improvisation, derived from jazz music, and pianism permeated with European classical music. Just like his new album, his solo concerts are an invitation to discover the world of sounds built on the "here and now" principle.
Dominik Wania has begun to gain recognition by playing alongside Tomasz Stańko. He received an invitation from the legendary jazzman immediately after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. During his four-year collaboration with the trumpeter, Wania met his next musical partner - saxophonist Maciej Obara, whom the quartet he has been co-creating to this day. Undeniably one of the most important Polish formations in recent years has allowed the pianist to develop his talent and begin his international career. Together with the Obara’s band he visited the best jazz halls and festivals in the world and recorded six albums, the last two of which are also included in the ECM Records catalogue. Apart from performing and recording in numerous jazz constellations, he also devotes himself to teaching at the Music Academy in Krakow and Katowice, as well as recording film music in cooperation with Zbigniew Preisner.
SEIFERT NIGHT, the best of Polish jazz: EABS, 4 November 2022, Pancevo Jazz Festival
The past decade has been marked as a major refreshment of the jazz scene around the world, including key cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and London. This new generation of musicians made a real renaissance of the genre, once again taking it from the underground to the mainstream, attracting completely new audiences. The same mission is guided by the musicians of Wrocław based band EABS. They have been working on the concept of "reconstruction from deconstruction" since 2012, often redefining the classics from several decades ago, mixing them with the latest genres of contemporary urban music, creating a completely new quality and original sound. It is possible that many will claim that this is no longer jazz, but sometimes you have to demolish and rebuild to create something completely new - based on the old foundations.
The musicians' camp in Wrocław who have been growing and developing at the legendary Electro-Acoustic Beat Sessions at the now defunct Puzzle club (2012-2014). The record, which is the essence of these sessions, can be heard today on the first release bearing the acronym EABS - hardly available today, but formerly distributed for free on the cassette Puzzle Mixtape [Astigmatic Records, 2016]. Among the guests of these sessions were MED (Stones Throw), Coultrain, Ben Lamar Gay (International Anthem) and Jeru The Damaja. The closure of the club was an impulse for further development, which meant that the EABS band grew into one of the most important voices of the Polish jazz community in recent years. The audience had to wait almost three years for the debut EABS’ material, when the collective began to move away from hip-hop being understood as a genre in which the rapper plays the first fiddle. The uniqueness of EABS, however, is determined not only by the instrumental mastery and topicality of their language of expression, but also by hip-hop provenance and socio-political commitment.
In 2017, after the critically acclaimed debut album EABS Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda), devoted to the less known works of Komeda, the band decided to keep the momentum and release two more vinyl records. The first (black), recorded live in Katowice - Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda) Live at Jazz Club Hipnoza and the second (pink) recorded on tape and released on the British label 22a Music, entitled Kraksa / Svantetic, crowning their work with the so called “Komeda’s triptych". The third (green) studio album received many great reviews in Poland and abroad, was promoted on many radio stations in Poland and around the world, including Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio 6 Music), Thris Tian (Worldwide FM), Lefto (Radio Brussels) and Andrew Jervis (Bandcamp). Some of the biggest polish magazines and newspapers (such as Polityka, Przekrój, Rzeczpospolita) praised their work. The band also appeared on the cover of the Jazz Forum magazine. The excellent reception sold out the entire first edition of albums within a month and a half of the premiere.
Shortly after the premiere of their debut album, EABS played in such prestigious venues as Studio S1 in Warsaw, at the Shakespeare Theater in Gdańsk, at the NFM in Wrocław or the NOSPR hall in Katowice and at some of the largest Polish festivals such as Woodstock in Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Tauron Nowa Muzyka, OFF Festival in Katowice, Open'er in Gdynia and a concert tour at Męskie Granie. The band also played the main jazz festivals in Poland: Jazz nad Odrą, Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, Jazz Jamboree, Bielska Zadymka Jazzowa and many more. EABS has appeared many times in the UK, playing at vibrant London venues such as Total Refreshment Center, KOKO, Ronnie Scott’s as well as clubs in Manchester and Liverpool. They performed at XJAZZ in Berlin and such showcase festivals as Eurosonic (Groningen) or The BuSH Festival (Budapest). EABS also played several concerts in China (Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen). Later, the band also appeared in Hungary, Romania, Austria and Montenegro.
Despite the fact that the reinterpretations of Krzysztof Komeda's music performed by EABS were very far from the originals, many people wondered what their original album, which appeared in mid-2018, could sound like. This time the band focused on Slavic mythology and Polish demonology, inviting British musician Tenderlonious to cooperation. The main inspiration for this album was the world famous "Slavic melancholy", in which the band tried to find their own DNA. Slavic Spirits is an attempt to contact the spirit of the irretrievably lost culture of Slavs living close to nature, as well as with their world burdened with serfdom, which, due to the illiteracy of the people, will never be thoroughly researched. It means that it can only be referred to through the language of emotions. Therefore, under the influence of the deliberations of many musicians, historians, journalists, writers and even psychotherapists, compositions that the band got out of the depths of their spirit and imagination began to appear very quickly.
In October 2019, after more than 33 years, the archive record from the first landing of Sun Ra Arkestra in Poland was released to the public. On the occasion of the Sun Ra Live in Kalisz 1986 premiere, EABS has prepared a special concert related to this release. Moments later, during the lockdown, a deep reflection on the philosophy of the incomer from Saturn influenced the recording session and the final shape of the album Discipline of Sun Ra. Then there were quite serious changes in the selection of songs and even more ambitious attempts at the recreation of originals, pushing some compositions not only towards hip-hop (in the spirit of inspired by Gil Scott-Heron or David Axelrod), but also genres such as juke or house. “By infinity, Mr.Ra means creating jazz of the future, but also covering the past”- the same idea is carried by polish musicians. On the Slavic Spirits album, EABS was inspired by the ancient past. As we now know, discovering Sun Ra’s concept wasn’t coincidental. He also believed and shared the philosophy of coming through the darkness to see the sun and enlightenment. In case there’s no hope for living on our planet, we need to look for metaphorical escapism. That’s where the idea of building a cosmic ship under ‘Polish Space Program’ was born.
If one was to interpret the whole output of EABS in general, an inquisitive listener would notice that each subsequent album stems from the previous one. The overtones are similar and they can be treated as variations on the same theme. The only thing that changes is the background of the story. It is all about life and death, the beginning and the end of the world, and the role of human beings entangled in all this existentially. Following the futurism lessons from Sun Ra, the band travels to the year 2061, continuing their mission in space in the company of a living legend, Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski.
"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE." – this was the ominous message from the mythical Monolith of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The quote became a metaphor for the situation the EABS crew found themselves in when the pandemic hit. It was not only Europe that became inaccessible, the whole world shut down. A reflection emerged that only empathy and cooperation could save humanity. We will not be able to face the greater threat that may come from the outside together by fighting wars among ourselves on Earth. A similar analogy can be seen in Arthur C. Clarke's book series, which was made even more famous by Stanley Kubrick with his iconic screen adaptation, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in 1986, the third part of the series has served as an inspiration for the fourth EABS album titled 2061, a soundtrack to the film that hasn't been made yet.
Band members:
Marek Pędziwiatr - piano, synths & vocal
Paweł Stachowiak - bass
Jakub Kurek - trumpet
Olaf Węgier - tenor sax
Marcin Rak - drums
SEIFERT NIGHT:
2021
- Belgrade Jazz Festival 2021: Marcin Wasilewski Trio feat. Joe Lovano, Mateusz Smoczyński Trio oraz Piotr Damasiewicz Trio.
- KOMEDA/SEIFERT NIGHT at Budapest Music Center 2021: Kuba Więcek & Piotr Pianohooligan Orzechowski, Atom String Quartet, EABS
2022
- X-Jazz Berlin 2022: EABS, Monika Borzym & Friends feat. Kacper Smoliński
- Seifert Night in Munich 2022: Adam Pierończyk Trio, Leszek Żądło Trio
- Belgrade Jazz Festival 2022: Dominik Wania
Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland as part of the multi-annual programme NIEPODLEGŁA 2017–2022
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