Singer Jazz Festival 2021

The jazz element of the Warsaw Jewish Culture Festival headed by its artistic director, Adam Baruch, has continuously attracted connoisseurs of this music genre for several years.  This year, both the well-known artists and young artists who search for new sounds and successfully combine different genres of music under the jazz umbrella will present their works.  Some of the events will also be broadcast on-line.

Singer Jazz Festival will be opened by RGG concert in the Nożyk Synagogue. In 2021, this group is celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the artistic activity and has prepared many concert surprises.  One of them will be their performance during the Singer Jazz Festival. The musicians will present their latest album entitled “Mysterious Monuments on the Moon” but they will also recall and play their songs from the earlier albums, such as “Aura” or “Szymanowski”.

The artist-in-residence of this year’s Singer Jazz Festival will be Paul Brody – an American trumpeter from San Francisco, composer, arranger, permanently residing in Berlin.  Brody has an excellent knowledge of classical music, jazz (he has composed for Duke Ellington’s musicians and others), free jazz, soul, and blues.  He will perform twice in the Hard Rock Cafe with the Piotr Lemańczyk Electric Trio and Radek Wośko Chamber Trio, as well as at the Summer Stage of the Jewish Theater with Polski Piach Group.

fot. Dirk Hasskarl

The starting point for the musical language of the new group started by the drummer Radek Wośko is the 20^th-century chamber music, especially the works composed by Olivier Messiaen and Béla Bartók.  The project has been creatively focusing on going beyond the convention of typical jazz music, especially in composition-related aspects.  An alternative combination of instruments and the knack to break conventions result in a very fresh sound.

In his project, Piotr Lemańczyk Electric Trio, the leader of the group returns to the bass guitar after a ten-year break.  Inspired by a six-string electric bass guitar, he has composed music that completes his previous activities.  By exploring the sounds of “non-acoustic” instruments, he complements and significantly broadens his artistic expression.  The way this project’s sound has been designed brings the most outstanding creators of this genre to one’s mind.  During the concert, we will hear echoes of the music works composed by Allan Holdsworth, Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew”, Chick Corea Electric Band, or hints of the works of the greatest Polish composers of the 20^th century.

With great sensitivity and a pinch of salt, the musicians of Polish Piach Group play the role of music nomads who feel the blues and draw us into an unhurried trance.  The founder of the project, Patryk Zakrocki, put down the violin, viola or electric mbira.  This time, he reached for an acoustic guitar and, together with the rest of his group, put his finger on the rooted blues music from different corners of the world.  This is why the concert presenting their album “Południe [South]” should appeal to all people who are so passionate about listening to old-time recordings of bluesmen from Mississippi.