WACŁAW ZIMPEL
The sound of Hammond organs, a Fender Rhodes electric piano, the khaen (a bamboo organ from Laos), a free jazz clarinet… Minimalism, arranged and repetitive structures, contemplative and complex rhythms… This list of “ingredients” would have probably turned into a book, so instead, let’s simply present a few facts:
Wacław Zimpel is a composer, clarinettist, improviser and the leader of The Light, Hera, the Wacław Zimpel Quartet, Undivided and the Four Walls band. His experiments and musical research spans classical clarinet and free jazz improvisations, through liturgical music and African trance, to complex rhythms and melodies of traditional Indian music. Stephen Heyman from the New York Times aptly called him a “musical chameleon” and believe me – his inspirational background is the whole world. On his website we can find a huge list of collaborations with Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake and Maallem Mokhtar Gania (a Moroccan master of the gimbri) among others. For him, improvisation is the best tool of communication. Not to hurt his outstanding talent by any word or comparison more, I’ll just let the music speak for itself.
SAAGARA
Five renowned virtuosos and two musical worlds meet on one stage. A sublime rhythm and melody system of old Carnatic music (associated with southern India) meets European traditions of classical composition and free jazz improvisations. The most outstanding Indian musicians of the younger generation, Giridhar Udupa, Bharghava Halambi, Mysore N. Karthik and K Raja, joined forces with Wacław Zimpel to let new combinations of organic, ethnic and improvised music from among the worlds emerge.
ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI
Richard Whitelaw remembers an artist whose music could “suck the soul out of your body” (The Wire, 2014)
Electronic music composer, sound artist and incredibly intelligent noise-constructor. His compositions were sometimes described as odes to loudspeakers, but they were rather a very condensed and physical sonic experience for all the people involved. Karkowski was not only combining modern music with distant explosions and industrial energy, but also experimenting with textural change, drama, form and new technologies. As part of Sensorband trio (along with Edwin van der Heide and Atau Tanaka) he used ultrasound, infrared and bioelectric sensors as instruments. Together, they were researching the physicality and human control/discontrol in relation to interactive technology through musical creation.
NONSTATE
„NONESTATE’s music is a result of the exploration of liminal spaces “in between”: between noise and silence, between audible and what is beyond the range of human hearing, between flesh and bit of information, between analogue and digital”
This is how the creators of this audio-visual project, Maciej Ozog (PhD, media theorist, researcher and musician) and Bartłomiej Kuźniak (a composer and musician) describe their music. Fascinated by human perception and moments of transgression, in collaboration with VJ Mac Umatik (creator of multiscreen video projections), they try to create a “situation” that opens the participants to the psychosomatic experience on the border of meditation.
