Piano
Recital by
(Poland)
Featuring
JERZY
PRZEŹDZIECKI
(Poland)
Part I: Self-Portrait
Celestial Delusion for piano and electronics (2020) **
I. Carbon
Sun
II. Vectoric
Lake
III. Twelfth
Night
IV. Footprints
on an Exoplanet
* * *
Part II: Double Self-Portrait
Free Improvisation Set
Andrzej Karałow
– piano & electric guitar effects
Jerzy Przeździecki
– analogue synthesisers
__________
** World premiere
This concert has been made
possible
thanks to the generous support of:
thanks to the generous support of:
*
* *
The
Performers / The Composers
Andrzej Karałow (b. 1991) is Polish pianist, composer, improviser and
doctor of musical arts. He is currently a lecturer at the Fryderyk Chopin
University of Music in Warsaw, where he graduated in piano and composition.
He is a laureate of many national and international
piano competitions, as well as of several scholarships, including the
prestigious Young Poland Scholarship
and the Prize of Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland. He has performed
at prestigious venues in the country and abroad as a soloist or accompanied by renowned
orchestras like the Warsaw Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia and the Polish Radio
Orchestra. Equally successful as a composer, he is a prize winner of national
and international composition competitions (including Bartók+ Opera Festival in
Hungary, Karol Szymanowski International Composition Competition in Katowice, Ablaze Records Call for Electronic Works).
For the 2018/2019 season, he was selected to work with the London Philharmonic
Orchestra during the LPO Young Composers Programme, which resulted in a premiere
performance of his orchestral work Veins
in Southbank Centre in London.
He has released four albums so far. The first one, Wir (The
Vortex), was releasedby Requiem
Records in 2018. It consists of free-improvised electroacoustic works
performed in duo with music producer Jerzy Przeździecki. The second one, After All (2019, Requiem Records), is a saxophone and piano recital with music from the
20th and the 21st centuries, recorded in duo with Spanish saxophonist Pablo
Sánchez-Escariche Gasch. The third CD, Through (2019, DUX), is
a portrait album with some of Karałow’s chamber works. The fourth CD is the
recently released concert album Pedestal’s Complement (2020, Bocian Records), once more in duo with Jerzy Przeździecki.
His works are performed at concert and festival
programmes in the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, Spain, Germany, France,
Russia, Italy, Estonia and Hungary. Recordings of his works and several
performances of him as a pianist have been released on over 10 CD albums by such
labels as Ablaze Records
(USA), DUX, Chronicles of Warsaw Autumn and others.
He is co-founder and member of Ensemblage Foundation,
which promotes new music and performers. He is also a member of the association
of Polish authors ZAiKS, as well as the
Youth Circle Polish Composers Association in Warsaw. He is also co-founder of the
internet magazine Spektrum, which is focused on new art.
Although classical music is the main field of his
activity, Andrzej Karałow is also open to experiments in the electronic and
alternative genres, combining techniques and inspirations from various fields
of art into his own unique musical language.
(© Zuzanna Gasiorowska)
* * *
The analogue techno maverick Jerzy Przeździecki (b. 1973) is one of the more powerful and
uncompromising voices on the electronic music scene of the former Eastern Bloc.
He lives and works in Warsaw.
Bred throughout the 90s on a varied diet of first wave
techno, new beat and post-industrial mutants like SPK or Psychic TV, he
developed his own vision of highly intricate and detailed yet definitely
danceable, funked-up techno for connoisseurs of the genre.
Actively involved in producing music for over two
decades, he started his career with the world-touring Bigwigs, later to release his solo and collaborative music on such
labels as Cocoon, Whirlpoolsex, Synewave, Recognition, Nachtstrom Schallplatten or Affin. His productions have been appreciated
and played by numerous DJ/producer heavyweights including Laurent Garnier,
Oliver Ho, Joey Beltram and DJ Hell, while Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore included Jerzy’s
track in the band’s tour DJ set. Currently, he has recorded two quite successful
EPs with Jacek Sienkiewicz as a duo Tumult
Hands. He has also been quite busy focusing on his long-running Epi Centrum project whose LP is out on Damon Wild’s Synewave Records.
Jerzy Przeździecki devotes most of his time to
studying the arcanes of deep composition and researching the possibilities of
various legendary studio gears, such as Buchla’s modular Morton Subotnick-designed
System 200e.
(© Eliza Krakówka)
* * *
The Programme
Part I: Self-Portrait – Celestial Delusion
In this new
piece of mine I wanted to transfer us to another world with
experiences from the present one. We see here new landscapes, plants,
life. The composition shows us a specific image, the
world, and it is a dreamy projection of abstract shapes,
sets of colours and associations. We confront them with memories of the fall of
nature and the dark consequences of the actions of our species. A newly
discovered world appears here, you might say – an imagined one. Facing a new
creation resembles going through a symbolic portal. Post-apocalyptic
memories are blending with the unreal world, a kind of utopia – we fall
into a trance while experiencing everything new that surrounds us. It is
difficult to describe the multitude of sensations seen through the human eyes
and experienced by every single sense. The new planet may appear as a
salvation, but also as a repetition of the dark prophecy.
Celestial Delusion is also a personal journey and a reflection. It creates an
abstract set of shapes, colours and landscapes of the new world or the experiences and memories that brought us there. A journey from the
fall of civilisation and nature to the observation of new flora and fauna, new
suns, passing through the unknown colours of the night. A journey to the
memories of a Home that is appearing at the same time here – very close, as
well as far away.
Andrzej Karałow
Part II: Double Self-Portrait – Free Improvisation Set
A story, just the same as
improvisation, should give an impression of a spontaneous stream of events. A
good speaker can draw his listeners into a colourful flow of events the resolution
of which they would impatiently await.
So far, we have released two CDs
together: the studio album Wir (The Vortex), issued by Requiem Records, and the live concert
album Pedestal’s Complement, issued
by Bocian Records. Entirely
improvised, they guide us through stylistically diverse moments during which we
give in to the attempt to create our own world. A world in which colour is the
dominant forming element of our common musical language. Wandering through the
internal sound landscapes of such instruments as the Buchla Music Easel
synthesizer, modular synthesizer, piano or DSI Prophet 6, we accept the
challenge to map these seemingly different musical lands and merge them into a
single, organic whole.
The whole set of the second part of the concert programme
will be fully improvised, played „from scratch”; that means, that every performance
is unique.
Andrzej Karałow / Jerzy
Przeździecki
(© Maciej Puczynski)