Storyboard started as a collaborative effort with Adam Bałdych to create an subtle marriage of acoustic jazz sound, my approach to the string orchestra idiom and a topping of Adam's distinctive electric violin sound. The material became more diverse than we expected - ranging from ballads so soft my ears bled to crazy groove tunes leveraging electronics and fierce jazz beats. Never before I have composed anything close to this kind of music. read more »
Tunisian vocals, oud and kanun virtuosos meet an american string quartet written for by a polish composer (that is totally out of his mind when it comes to arranging someone else's music), a serbian percussionist, a french flamenco guitarist and some crazy music.
Kid Brown is playing compositions of Jadwiga Kłapa that feature optimistic polish lyrics in an easy-listening soul/jazz flavor and talented Ania Frączek and Jadwiga on vocals. I'm trying to destroy this serenity and every time - depending on the lineup for each concert - the songs are getting different treatment - from a happy free-jazz chaos, to more Beady Belle'sque tight sounding soundscapes. Jadwiga is the only person I know who enjoys improvising new lines and lyrics onstage, so we blatantly use that to make new arrangements as we go.
Composer's Ensemble is here to deliver insane music from emerging composers taught by prof. Ed Partyka(USA/Austria) and it's lineup resembles a symphonic orchestra in a way an instant soup resembles a soup. In other words it's an essence, a compressed feel of a symphonic orchestra so the tools to operate on it stay the same, but I don't have to make more than 53 phone calls before each rehearsal.
The next difference is that we have jazz players helping here and there - a soprano saxophonist, a trumpet/flugelhorn player, rhythm section, voice, electric guitar apart from acoustic guitar, and on vibraphone and marimba You can find some decent jazzmen too.
Snub Cube is a journey into open modal and formal improvisation, where harmonically intense themes are to be build upon in a modular and rhythmic, but also sensitive and musical way. Snub Cube relies on dialogue, and sometimes resorts to fierce battles, but tries to avoid being selfish. Its sophisticated geometrical form it took name from has been severly upgraded by old-school graffiti artists - and taking this metaphor back to musical idiom - Snub Cube do resort to funky countermeasures. read more »
A music that is taking the audience on a tour.
Nikola Kołodziejczyk Orchestra is my latest project created to take the music that accumulated in my head up to now for a walk. When I created the band I knew only one thing lineup-wise: no frontiers. read more »
This is a big band that is playing more dynamic marks that any other. Our featured bass clarinet player is craving for a rest here and there, but I like when people are red on their faces. When even our singer loses her breath singing a crazy line with the trumpets we can always resort to harp, vibraphone and a string quartet to provide some easily sustainable ambience with their evolving ostinatos. (I hope an evolving ostinato isn't too much of a contradiction)
This band is responsible for helping me out with my master's recital for which I wrote an hour long piece named Extreme Conditions - hence the name of the band. Everything was led, supervised and conducted by the great Ed Partyka, to whom I will forever be in debt for making something out of my score.
