Tomasz Stańko, photo: Marek Dusza
Tomasz Stańko will perform a set he composed specifically for the 10th edition of Singer's Warsaw, the Jewish Cultural Festival 2013.
The trumpet star says:
This is a unique situation for me because I don’t typically play this type of music. I am very excited about performing the first part with the group Kroke, with whom I have never played. We’ve never had this kind of opportunity even though we have known each other for a while. Together we will be improvising. In the second part I will be performing with my New York Quartet a specially designed program that will include a new composition.
One of the most popular Polish jazz musicians will perform a two-part concert at All Saint’s Church located on Grzybowski Plaza. In the first part the group Kroke, which typically performs klezmer music, will accompany Stańko. The second part will feature his New York Quartet, with whom he recorded his recent album Wisława; dedicated to Wisława Szymborska and released in 2013. The quartet includes David Virelles on piano, Thomas Morgan on bass and Gerald Cleaver on percussion.
Kroke is a Polish jazz trio that has drawn inspiration from traditional Jewish music. The trio was founded in 1992 by Tomasz Kukurba, Jerzy Bawoł and Tomasz Lato, graduates of the Academy of Music in Kraków. Kukurba plays viola, violin and contributes vocals, Bawoł is on accordion and Lato plays bass. The name of the band means "Kraków" in Yiddish, and the trio bases its music on elements of folk traditions from various nations while using styles gleaned from classical and jazz genres. The group is known to perform new, unique compositions, and Jon Lusk wrote in his review for BBC, “Kroke live are a hair-raisingly brilliant, unforgettable experience.”
The trio has worked with Peter Gabriel, the classical violinist Nigel Kennedy and Krzysztof Herdzin and Sinfonia Varsovia. They have released albums including The Sounds of the Vanishing World, which received the German Record Critics’s Award in 2000.
The 10th edition of the Jewish Culture Festival: Singer’s Warsaw concludes on the 1st of September.
Sources: PAP, press materials. Author: SW, 26/08/2013
Translation: SMG 26/08/2013