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Leszek Możdżer will perform at this year’s Festival again accompanied by two pianos.
This time it will be a classical 12-octave piano and a completely unique 10-octave instrument, the only one in the world, created at the artist’s request by scientists from the Polish Academy of Sciences. The construction of this piano was inspired by the desire to draw attention to mathematics, through which we can calculate the laws of physics and accurately predict the results of experiments, we can understand the world.
The artist’s concert will be interspersed with reflections on the nature of sound, mathematics and reality.
So we are waiting for a unique experience on every level: from musical aesthetic impressions to philosophical and scientific reflections.
The question of mathematics is particularly on point these days. Physicists working on unification theory, a theory that would combine quantum mechanics with the theory of relativity, have not progressed for many years. One reason is shortcomings in the mathematics itself. For some time now, there have been claims that a new and better language, a new mathematics, is needed to create a truly qualitatively new theory of everything.
The decaphone piano is probably an artist’s question also about the decimal system itself, which is so common that we forget that it is not at all the only one and perhaps not the best one. We still have many remnants of the sixth/twelfth system. We divide the hour into 60 minutes, the hour into 6 0seconds, and the day into 24 hours. The archaic notions of a kick (60 bars) or a dozen (12 bars) also still ring out. The standard piano has 12 keys in one octave. Standard; because the one we will listen to on Vibrations has 10 keys.
In an interview with PAP, Prof. Nurowski of the Center for Theoretical Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences explained that Leszek Możdżer needed a calculation of how to divide an octave into 10 parts in the so-called evenly tempered scale.
The scientist further explained how our brain works. Well, it recognizes melody not by the specific frequencies of the sounds that follow each other, but rather by the ratios of these vibrations to each other. This is why you can start singing a song with a sound at a frequency that suits you, but if you choose further sounds in the same ratios as in the original, the audience will recognize the melody.
An outstanding pianist and composer, he made a mental and stylistic revolution in Polish jazz that no other jazzman had ever experienced before. He dressed difficult jazz phrases, complex improvisations, melodic standards and subtlety of compositions in the framework of a specific jazz, which – without trying to be effusive towards listeners, commercial and hit – became “Leszek Możdżer’s jazz”, teeming with expression.
Jazz imagination, an interesting idea of improvisation, the subtlety of Chopin’s etudes and mazurkas, “comedic” inspirations – create in his music a new color for jazz piano chamber music.
He is one of the most interesting phenomena of Polish jazz in recent decades. Initially associated with the “yass” formation Love and its creators – non-conformists: Tymon Tymanski and Mikołaj Trzaska, then appeared in many configurations: From duos with David Friesen (1995),Adam Pierończyk (1996) through typically jazz lineups such as the bands of Emil Kowalski (1991), Eryk Kulm (1993), Zbigniew Namysłowski (1992-96), Tomasz Stanko (1992), Buddy de Franco (1995), Archie Shepp (1996), Arthur Blyth (1997) to symphonic lineups: Michał Urbaniak’s Live in Holy City (1996), Rafał Augustyn’s Itinerarium, Charles Fox’s Fantasie and his own compositions : Seven Miniatures for improvising piano and strings, Missa Gratiatoria, Prelude and Fugue, Opera Immanuel Kant or the last concerto composed for Baroque Holland
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The pianist’s extensive discography includes more than a hundred albums made as his own projects or in collaboration with prominent artists. He has recorded and toured with, among others, David Gilmour, Nana Vasconcelos, Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Tan Dun, Pat Metheny or Adam Makowicz (Makowicz vs Możdżer: At The Carnegie Hall 2004). The album Impressions On Chopin (1999) has already entered permanently into the peculiar canon of recordings inspired by the works of the brilliant Polish composer. Leszek Możdżer has also collaborated with Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (recordings for the Oscar-winning soundtrack to the film Finding Neverland and the album Kaczmarek by Możdżer), composer Zbigniew Preisner, e.g. Requiem for my Friend, 10 easy pieces for piano.
The pianist finds himself most fully at home in solo projects Piano (2004), Komeda (2011) and in an original trio with Lars Danielsson and Zohar Fresco. The Time album recorded in 2005 reached Diamond Record status, the trio’s subsequent albums Between Us And The Light (2006), Live (2007), and Poland (2013) reached Double Platinum Record status. In 2017, he recorded the album Earth Particles with Holland Baroque. He also realizes major festival projects ( Enter Music Festival, Jazz on the Oder).
In 2012, he became the first Pole to chair the jury of the international Montreux Jazz Piano Competition in Switzerland, which has been held annually since 1999 as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival and is organized under the patronage of Quincy Jones.
He has also written music for productions by Wojciech Koscielniak (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Scat, Bal w Operze wg Tuwim), Grzegorz Jarzyna (4. 48 Psychosis, Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, 2002), Andrzej Domalik (Gogol’s The Revisor, National Theater), Jan Englert (Fredro’s Maiden Vows), Michał Zadara (Gombrowicz’s Operetta, Capitol Theater), Grzegorz Chrapkiewicz (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and films by, among others. Among others, Sylwester Latkowsky(Pub 700, The Last Supper), Wiktor Grodecki (Insatiability according to Witkacy), Michal Boganim (The Insolent Earth), Artur Baron Wieck (All the Women of Matthew), Bodo Kox (Opera from Soap).
In 2017, Wrocław Opera premiered the opera Emmanuel Kant, directed by Jerzy Lach, with music composed by Leszek Możdżer.
For his music for Maciej Pieprzyca’s film “Icarus. The Legend of Mietek Kosz,” Leszek Możdżer received an award in the Best Music category at the 44th Gdynia Film Festival, the 2020 Orły Film Award, the award for the best Polish Soundtrack of the Year 2019 given by 50 music and film experts at the Film Music Festival in Krakow, the award of the 9th Komeda Film Festival Grand Prix and the Fryderyk Award in the Illustrative Music Album of the Year category. The sound track has also been recognized with awards: RMF Classic’s MocArts, Onet’s Illuminations, Empik’s Bestsellers nomination and the Special Award of the 34th Tarnów Film Awards.
Leszek Możdżer thus reveals himself as a creator of a new style in jazz music, where sound and atmosphere are built by impression and mood and a unique authorial performance style. Perhaps this is why the pianist is accepted as an eloquent jazz artist of the younger generation.
