Jerzy Rogiewicz

Composer, percussionist, pianist and improviser. Sometimes conductor. Creator of film music and songs for children. In all these roles and formats, he seeks strangeness and new, original sounds.

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Jerzy Rogiewicz, photo Lado ABC

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Jerzy Rogiewicz was born in 1983 in Bydgoszcz. He was not born into a particularly musical family. Had he entrusted the choice of his life’s path to his family, it is very possible that today we would call him a ‘doctor’. His father was a psychiatrist, his brother a gynaecologist, his grandmother a midwife, and his mother and sister are both psychologists. However, the future artist very quickly realised that he saw a different path for himself. ‘Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by the drums’ – he recalls.

I was one of those kids who pestered the family by playing on cooking pots. There must have been something about this instrument. Maybe the way of engaging the whole body while playing? Or maybe the brilliance of the various parts, making it look like one big toy to me?

As a result, Jerzy Rogiewicz persuaded his parents to enrol him in a music school. Unfortunately, learning to play the drums didn’t start until the fourth grade, so – as he recalls – had to endure playing the piano for the first three years.

This was due not so much to the nature of the instrument itself, but to the way my brain worked, which was very bad at combining reading graphic signs with making sounds from the instrument. This has stayed with me to this day; I avoid sheet music whenever I can.

This certainly did not make life easy for Rogiewicz at the Academy of Music in Kraków, where he took up studies in a composition class under Professor Zbigniew Bujarski. Thinking back to those years, the percussionist admits that he made this choice while dreaming of a career as a film music composer. However, the conservative modernism he encountered at the Academy had a paralysing effect on him. ‘By far the most creative place for me at the time was the electronic music studio, where, under the guidance of Professor Magdalena Długosz, I took my first steps into the world of computer music.’

Rogiewicz also warmly remembers his classes with maestro Krzysztof Penderecki.

They took place once every three months in the professor's house in Wola Justowska. It was very pleasant, the professor turned out to be a very nice person. He commented on the pieces we brought to him in a very concrete and interesting way. He didn’t create any distance, zero pretentiousness. A very tasty lemon muffin. Of course, even then I had the distinct feeling that we were separated by an ocean of experience and that, despite the desire on both sides, composing simply could not be taught. There are some conventional basics, you learn the rest by doing.

Rogiewicz travelled to classes at Professor Penderecki’s house together with pianist Jacek Kita, with whom he had already met in his first year. An understanding was immediately established between the students. Both were slightly put off by the conservative ideas they had encountered at the Academy. They were rather drawn towards jazz and improvisation. Rogiewicz still remembers when they symbolically exchanged their favourite records. He gave Kita Mr. Bungle’s California and he repaid him with the album P.O.L.O.V.I.R.U.S. by Kury. Having such a start, they decided to form a band, which was quickly joined by double bassist Piotr Domagalski. This is how Levity was formed – a multi-purpose, jazz-like creation that not only left behind three warmly received albums, but also performed Rogiewicz’s graduation piece for trio and symphony orchestra.

Among Levity’s albums, Chopin Shuffle deserves special attention. In connection with the upcoming celebrations of the Chopin Year, Universal Music Polska surprised the trio with an offer to release any album with the music of the great Polish Romantic. As Rogiewicz recalls, they were given a set of Chopin’s works by the label and complete artistic freedom. The only suggestion was to invite some Japanese composer to the recordings. Rogiewicz recalls:

After listening to the whole thing, we decided that we wanted to record a double album with all Chopin’s preludes. Universal agreed. We invited Toshinori Kondo to work with us and we enlisted super-producer Marcin Bors, and they agreed as well. They also agreed to a cover by Macio Moretti. As much as we wanted to complain about something, there was not much to complain about.

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Masecki / Rogiewicz – Don't Panic! We're Live #4

Paradoxically, the album, rooted in the work of a monumental artist and released by a phonographic giant, most perfectly captured the musicians’ delight in the unfettered creativity and artistic craziness they experienced while playing in the Chłodna 25 club and forming friendships with the creators of the Lado ABC scene. This energy convinced the music critics, providing the album with great reviews in both the jazz and mainstream press. Kajetan Prochyra wrote for the Jazzarium.pl portal:

The most common feeling accompanying the double-CD album Chopin Shuffle is the joy of experiencing modern, fresh, inventive, brilliantly played music from the borderline of genres.

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Jerzy Rogiewicz, photo Lado ABC

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Of the numerous artists Rogiewicz met during this period, his meeting with pianist and composer Marcin Masecki had the greatest impact on his further career. A year after the premiere of Chopin Shuffle, the debut of the sextet Profesjonializm, featuring the percussionist, was released. Then came the ten-piece brass band Polonezy, Trio Jazzowe, the Ragtime duo and the Jazz Band Młynarski-Masecki, which draws on the inter-war period.

Rogiewicz says:

I found a great friend in Marcin, I felt an almost telepathic human and musical connection with him on many occasions. I greatly appreciate his wisdom and the respect he shows for music, while at the same time treating it as a matter that can still be freely shaped. He treats monumental artists like fellow artists whom you admire, but never uncritically.

The drummer immediately adds that meeting the entire Lado ABC community was crucial to his artistic development. The same goes for the self-taught artists, who allowed him to see how many resources he had at his disposal after his seventeen years of musical education, which he had not noticed or underestimated.

Much sought-after as an instrumentalist and valued as an improviser, Rogiewicz over the years has also increasingly realised himself in other roles: as a composer, leader and even conductor. He got the opportunity to lead an orchestra on the occasion of the most media-sensitive project signed by Lado ABC – the album 1976: A Space Odyssey recorded by Zbigniew Wodecki and accompanied by the Mitch & Mitch Orchestra and Choir.

It was, of course, very stressful, because it was the first time I stood in front of an orchestra, a national one at that. After all, it wasn’t a Mahler symphony, just light arrangements, rhythmically held together by drums and bass. My role here was mainly to be the link between the world of “madmen with guitars” and “serious people with violin”.

The artist underwent training in leading a large – though not that large – line-up while performing in the band Jerz Igor, a group specialising in creating elegant, richly composed lullabies and songs for the youngest. Although nominally the band is a duo (Igor Nikiforow is the other half), several musicians took part in the recording of the album Mała Płyta [Small Album].

The first idea was very modest: to record an album for my son, who was about to be born, so that he could listen to my lullabies when I was playing a concert somewhere far away. In Jerz, I learnt something I thought impossible before: to compose together in a stress-free atmosphere. It turned out that creating music can be easy and enjoyable, and also produce a very cool effect. Quite a surprise! The children’s reception of the music was the icing on the cake.

In recent years, Jerzy Rogiewicz has increasingly been realising his dreams from his teenage years by composing music for films. Much of the credit for this goes to Jerz Igor, thanks to whom he stopped being perceived only as an instrumentalist. It started with work on a TV series, and then there were commissions from makers of feature-length films. Rogiewicz has written soundtracks for films such as The Mute (2018), Tarapaty 2 (2020), Miasto (2021) and Fucking Bornholm (2022).

There are films where you can go wild and experiment, and more mainstream films where there’s no room for that. I’m very fond of strangeness, of inventing new sounds, and I’m very lucky to work with directors who are open to this. Hence the opportunity to work with a large ensemble, but also to record brake discs, oil drums, play folk basses, create electronic choirs from ten ocarinas – all this keeps me from getting bored.

jerzy rogiewicz

film music

jazz pianist

21st century polish jazz

conductor