JAZZTOPAD FESTIVAL NYC Returns For 7th Edition, June 23-28

The 2023 US edition of Jazztopad, from June 23-30, will feature a series of commissions from the acclaimed Lutosławski Quartet in collaboration with jazz piano luminaries Craig Taborn and Uri Caine, EMMY-winning composer Don Davis and sought-after bassist and composer Michael Bates. Iraqi-American trumpeter and composer Amir ElSaffar will also perform on opening night in a return Jazztopad engagement. Pianist Joanna Duda will present her trio; singer/multi-instrumentalist Maniucha Bikont and bassist Ksawery Wójciński will perform as well. The US edition of Jazztopad has been organised by the National Forum of Music in Wrocław in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

The Jazztopad satellite events will kick off in three of Brooklyn's most cherished creative music venues: Shift, National Sawdust and Barbès. On June 26, the festival takes a more intimate form as well with a series of Living Room Concerts (details soon TBA). In nearby Philadelphia at Solar Myth, one of that historic jazz city's newest and most exciting venues booked by Mark Christman of Ars Nova Workshop, Philly's native son Uri Caine will perform. And continuing Jazztopad's successful and sustained partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center, now in its ninth year, the festival will hold events at Dizzy's Club and Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium as well.

Finally, Jazztopad heads to Vancouver, British Columbia for a Canadian finale featuring Joanna Duda with Ksawery Wójciński and trumpeter JP Carter and drummer Dylan van der Schyff as part of an ongoing collaboration and exchange of artists between Vancouver International Jazz Festival and Jazztopad.

"I am extremely happy that for the 7th time we are able to present some of the most exciting and creative artists from Poland and the US. The program features several world premieres of pieces commissioned by or written for Jazztopad Festival. Triggering new collaborations, presenting new music and building a community have been the main features of our festival which started in Poland 20 years ago." Piotr Turkiewicz - Artistic Director

ARTISTS

Craig Taborn's "Luminous Grid" is the first part of a concert-length work in progress for string quartet and improvising pianist. The piece is inspired in part by the work of Agnes Martin, whose abstract work strikes a balance between what at first seems meditative, static and balanced lines and grids but upon closer examination reveals a secret dynamism and beautiful instability. The piece involves the interaction between the string quartet and piano in an unfolding sound tapestry that seeks to both cleave to and escape from the condition of balance.

 

Joanna Duda, pianist, composer and improviser, creates experimental music with elements of jazz and contemporary classical. Her main projects are solo (KEEN, 2019) and the Joanna Duda Trio (FUMITSUKE, 2020), both of which involve the combining of electronic and acoustic sounds in an osmotic and organic way. The trio, with Max Mucha (double bass, fx) and Michał Bryndal (drums, electronics), has performed in such prestigious venues as Ronnie Scott's in London, Le Periscope in Lyon, Opus Jazz Club in Budapest and jazz festivals in Vancouver, Edmonton, Bremen and Helsinki. Duda also composed the music for the Erotica 2022 Netflix series, and took part in the album UNCHAINED with compositions by Julius Eastman, which was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards.

Maniucha Bikont is a singer and anthropologist with field research experience in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. She is a member of musical and theatrical ensembles dealing with traditional music, rituals, improvisation and unconventional vocal techniques. Her duo with Ksawery Wójciński combines jazz improvisation with the dying songs of Ukrainian Polesia in an original way. In their compositions they evoke spring, harvest, weddings, love, grandfatherly songs, carols and lullabies, combining them into stories mapping the cycles of nature and human life. Together they weave tales that transcend the boundaries of time and musical genre, drawing on archival recordings from Polish villages in the area.

Michael Bates, joining the Lutosławski Quartet with his group Acrobat (Marty Ehrlich, Fung Chern Hwei, Sara Schoenbeck and Michael Sarin), will premiere music from his new album Metamorphosis, a radically different interpretation of the revered Polish icon Witold Lutosławski. With literal themes or pieces composed in his spirit, Bates has created a powerful set of music that reveals a new way to think about pairing classical music and jazz. It features masterful re-orchestrations fueled by grooves found in both modern jazz and chamber ensembles. While Lutosławski is clearly being channelled, these nine fantastic voices will be on full display: beautiful, vicious, elegant and dissonant.

Ksawery Wójciński is a versatile double bassist and composer with great sensitivity to sound. His interests range from early music to the most sophisticated improvised contemporary music. He has collaborated with Charles Gayle, Mikołaj Trzaska, Satoko Fuji, Nicole Mitchell, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson and many more, and is the cofounder of such formations as the legendary Emergency and Hera. He is also known for his vocal experiments, which recall the spirit of such artists as Tom Waits and Frank Zappa.

 

Uri Caine, a Philadelphia native and GRAMMY nominee, recorded Space Kiss (2017) with the Lutosławski Quartet (816 Music), and has led his own ensembles performing arrangements of Mahler, Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, Schumann and Bach. Recent compositions include Agent Orange written for the Brussels Philharmonic and 4 Wunderhorn Songs written for the SWF Orchestra. Caine also composed The Passion of Octavius Catto for the Philadelphia Orchestra with a gospel choir celebrating the life of murdered Philadelphia civil rights leader Octavius Catto. Caine has also worked in groups led by Don Byron, Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Sam Rivers and Barry Altschul, among many others.

Don Davis, in addition to his prolific work in film scoring including The Matrix, has always maintained a busy concert career. His body of work includes the recently recorded Critical Mass for Orchestra, four string quartets, four trios for flute/harp/viola, works for one and two pianos, an oratorio, choral works, various chamber works, and a full-length three-act opera Río de Sangre. His work has been featured on recordings by the Arditti Quartet, the Debussy Trio, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. "Screaming Into The Void" was written for the Lutosławski Quartet and is dedicated to Krzysztof Penderecki and in memory of the many victims of the disastrous war in Ukraine.

Amir ElSaffar is a composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist, a recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a 2018 US Artist Fellow. His is conversant in the language of contemporary jazz but has also created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is a purveyor of the centuries-old, now endangered Iraqi maqam tradition, in which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur player. He has received commissions to compose for large and small jazz ensembles, traditional Middle Eastern ensembles, chamber orchestras, string quartets, and contemporary music ensembles, as well as dance troupes.

 

The Lutosławski Quartet performs contemporary music as well as recently commissioned pieces, and focuses on popularising Polish music, including works by Lutosławski, Bacewicz, Szymanowski, and also compositions by one of the group members - Marcin Markowicz. An ensemble made up of versatile and open-minded artists, they blend the contemporary repertoire with the gems of classical, Romantic and jazz music. They have worked with Charles Lloyd, Vijay Iyer, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Sylvie Courvousier, Mark Feldman, James Brandon Lewis and other jazz greats, and recorded the world's first album of Witold Lutosławski's chamber works for the Accord label.

The American edition of Jazztopad is an opportunity to discover the most important artists from the Polish contemporary jazz scene, a strongly recognizable brand in the world both in terms of quality of festivals and the craft of the artists.

Jazztopad Festival, the leading event of its kind in Poland, has organised its satellite editions all over the world (Japan, Turkey, South Korea) in collaboration with such partners as Jarasum International Jazz Festival, Tokyo Jazz Festival, Akbank Jazz Festival, TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. For 20 years, the festival has been commissioning music from some of the most important American artists including Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, Jason Moran, William Parker, Vijay Iyer and Terence Blanchard. The international creative partnerships of Jazztopad include such prestigious organizations as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Kennedy Center, London Jazz Festival and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Live recordings from the festival have been released on ECM and Blue Note Records.

Since Piotr Turkiewicz took the reins in 2008, the event has become one of Europe's premier jazz festivals, a dynamic endeavor that showcases the finest homegrown talent and engages some of the most storied figures in the music's history with ambitious commissions. From the beginning, Turkiewicz has sought to elevate jazz from his homeland, programming local musicians in Wrocław, but also organizing performances for them around the world, in collaboration with renowned jazz artists in the US and other countries.

This project is organized by the National Forum of Music in Wrocław in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.