Debra Richards: To describe Joanna Duda as simply a pianist doesn't capture the extraordinary dimensions of the music she produces. Whether touching a broken keyboard, using the sound of a rewinding tape machine, or mixing in field recordings, her innate playfulness allows any instrument to blossom - you get a sense that one of her greatest strengths is to listen attentively to whatever she uses. Joanna is also an incredible editor, cutting and mixing with a bold and surprising artfulness.
It was a friend of the family who played electric bass in the band Kombi that first caught her attention and before she could even string a sentence together she would sit with a piece of wood pretending it was a bass. Like many of the Rebel Spirits she is classically trained and has been influenced by both Baroque and minimalism. Part of her heritage is Chopin, of course, but it's also her parents' vinyl collection which included plenty of funk and jazz rock and there is often a groove that emerges in her work.
Be it leading the duo J=J, which is when she first came to my attention, or her current trio with Michał Bryndal and Max Mucha, on drums and bass, or playing solo, there is an essence which is clearly Duda. Finding her flow with collaborators is always uppermost and she found that recently with French horn player Morris Kliphuis from the Netherlands. Their project Wake the Dead is for electronics, improvisation and a Baroque ensemble and premiers in October.
Alongside her love of the communication between musicians she has begun to appreciate a form of creativity that requires her to dig in to herself as opposed to reacting to what is coming at her from the outside. Reading, travel and connecting to nature are part of her current evolution and in this interview she eloquently describes the ideas that inform her process.
On a final note, one of the first times I met Joanna was in London and I was a little concerned as to whether she would find the cafe I had suggested we meet at. Not only did she find it, but arrived on roller blades. Joanna's joy of life permeates all that she does.
Joanna Duda: I'm Joanna Duda and I'm a pianist, composer, producer… I play different instruments. I play piano. I'm doing some weird stuff on the computer and on synthesizers. And also, I am a cat lover. I really love cats and I've got a cat which has got three legs, but she's very nice. What else? Yes, and my bed is Joanna Duda Trio
I'm in a beautiful place. It's a small town, Gera Lario, in Italy. It's by the Como Lake. I've got most necessary stuff with me, lots of gear and a little bit of clothes.
I’ve always liked traveling, and somehow going for the concert tours was something like this to me. But after a while, I realized that going for a tour, it's not the same as you stay in one place for a longer time. So you can really get to know the place and, you know, take a little bit out of the culture and meet the people. And really, you know, just take inside you something from this place.
In 2019, I played with my band at the Jazz Connective festival in Helsinki. It was my first visit in Finland since I was a child. Because when I was really small, my dad was working in Finland on contracts. And my mum was taking me there, and referring to the communistic times in Poland then, it was a huge shock for me when we went to Finland. And I remembered this amazing, beautiful country. And actually, this visit in Finland was first since then, and it was funny for me to go there. And when I went to a shop like a supermarket, I could feel exactly the same smell that I felt when I was three years old. But back to the subject. We played on Jazz Connective and after the gig, I was invited to spend a few days in Vantaa, on a residency, artistic residency. It was in the middle of some forests and fields. And it was an apartment or the living room with a grand piano. And I was just staying there alone for these three or four days. And I was just spending time there with myself and the piano and my gear. The time that I'm spending by myself is very important for me. So, nobody is like talking to me, nobody is disturbing me. So I can focus really on my thoughts and also on the surroundings. So I remember I was walking around a bit, it was November. So it was already kind of cold. There was some water on the way and it turned into ice. And I really like to work on it. And I think I even got some films from this period because I was making some little filming with my phone. It’s just some things which are happening and the peace of mind, which is coming to me. And this is generating in me this perfect environment for me to compose rather than a direct inspiration, if you know what I'm saying. In that period, I was just using the piano. I remember it was looking very ugly, it was having this very ugly type of brownish color. And the sound of it wasn't the way I like the sound of the piano. So I just put some duct tape on the strings. So it was a little bit less loud because it was very freaking loud. So I put the duct tape and at this moment it was having this very short release. The sound was, like, more like a clavicembalo than then like a piano. Well, I was just starting to playing something. It was something that actually my hands were dictating me. And it sounded nice. So I decided to record it.
There is this theory of the brain evolution that because the brain was developing, humans could start using tools, and they were developing their skills of their hands. And there is this completely opposite point of view, which is close to my mind, that it was the opposite: first we were having these amazing abilities with our hands and thanks to playing with our hands, our brain could evolve. So sometimes my hands, I feel that they are like dictating me, I mean, I'm no longer thinking I'm no longer focusing on anything in particular. I'm having just this very physical feeling of pleasure with touching the keyboard and playing something and I'm not judging it anymore. And then my hands, they are just playing something, you know, and sometimes it's the biggest inspiration. Because they are very skilled. It's not done by intellectual work. Much more comes from this fun that you're having, sitting by the instrument than, like, thinking, Oh, my God, I'm gonna compose now this or that. No, no, it doesn't work like this.
Well, it's like, I'm composing like this: I'm just recording my improvisations, and then turning them into complete compositions. I think all of the work I've done is based on this kind of work. It's never like some intellectual thing, which is coming suddenly. Tt always comes like, when I go into, well, I don't know, maybe it's a kind of trance or a meditation, but I'm just finding something interesting. And then I'm recording and this is my starting point. And then I'm developing it further. You know, I just did this arpeggio, I've recorded it and that's all. Two or three months later, I went back to what I've recorded in Vantaa. And I started to really did in it ok? So I was digging and digging and playing and playing and digging…
I was just playing and repeating what what I was finding in Vantaa and I was playing and improvising with it. And I've decided to leave the arpeggios for the most of the piece because it's just… I like it. I just like it. I like how it sounds and I haven't heard it before anywhere also. So… I like it. After the part B comes the double bass solo and the end of the solo is a unison between me and the double bass.
When we are ending the double bass solo with this coda that we play unison there is some space. I wanted to include the electronic part there because all the time in this piece I'm playing the arpeggio so I'm too busy to do anything else. My idea was to make a remix of the theme that is appearing on the beginning and I've put some part of the theme into OP-1 synthesizer and I started to cut it and to experiment with it to create some kind of strange layer which is not in a tonality anymore, which I can manipulate with, which I can change the tune and the tempo and add some LFO. I am using more textures than thinking in a bass/drums/chords/piano way. So the solos they're not solos in the way that you would expect. It’s just a part which is constructed in a particular way. So it's just maybe, at some point, the samples that I'm doing, that I'm playing on OP1 during my solo. They are the leading part and Michał and Max are joining with something which is referring in a direct way to the thing that I'm playing. And they're trying to think inside the texture I've done already. And sometimes we are, I don't know, looping some shorter excerpts and we are staying on it. Well, during the live performance it’s much more interesting, I guess, than on the recording.
My first experimenting with electronics started when I got my first MacBook, it was the white MacBook, and it was maybe 2009. Yes, I think it was 2009, and I was, my goal was to make some dubsteps then. So in 2013, I've started to collaborate with Amareya Theater. Actually, with theater, I started to develop a way that I'm not just putting some sample or recording things on the track. So I've started to construct drum racks, some kind of instruments, which is based on 16 pads and under every pad I was having some different sample and I started to experiment with this. So then I started to really dig into what Ableton can do with push and I started to make lots of samples and use lots of things and out of it went something which was very organic and more free in the rhythm but still in a pulse somehow. Because I was looking for something which is a pulse, which has got a pulse, which is not just some abstract texture without the context. So I've started to develop this kind of repetitive things which weren't really inside any kind of tempo but they gave the tempo by themselves. It was a great experience for me to find something that I was, like, having in my mind since a long time but it was leading me to this moment so I could really develop it.
Back to Grasshopper. After some kind of a chaos we go back to the theme. Well, the title. It's a bit taken from a children's movie, like, you know “dobranocka”. Yeah, other countries they didn't have “dobranocka”. So in Poland, the movie for the children for the good night. I would explain it like this. Okay, so we will have the good night fairytale. And it is bringing me to some kind of joy that I was having when I was a kid. And it's kind of, I guess, autobiographic because when I'm in a good mood I'm a little bit like this grasshopper, jumping from one blade of grass to another. Maybe it's a track about my good mood. My name is Joanna Duda, and this is one of my favorite compositions: Grasshopper.