Piotr Damasiewicz - trumpet
Piotr Damasiewicz- composer, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, traveler and curator of international music platforms. In addition to studying the trumpet, he studied double bass, piano, classical singing - including Gregorian chant, he also studied choral and chamber conducting, arrangement and composition. In his work, he uses the language of jazz, 20th century classical music, ethnic music, modern music - including European improvised music and experiment.
He represented Poland on four international music platforms: Take Five Europe, Jazz Playes Europe Laboratory, Art Meetings and Melting Pot Laboratory (Jazztopad). In the last two, as a leader, composer and instrumentalist, he developed the ideas of open improvisation in contact with other fields of art. Currently, he is taking a doctorate at the Instrumental Department of the Academy of Music. Feliks Nowowiejski in Bydgoszcz.
Idea It can be said that it is characterized by being in "constant motion".
He visits various places, spaces and cultures, and creates there generating various sound connections. He is fascinated by informal and direct, but not only musical meetings.
One of the most important activities that he focuses on, as he describes it, is traveling deep into himself and deep into the sound at the same time. In 2019, as a pilgrim - musician, he traveled 4,186 km on foot from the Ukrainian border to Santiago de Compostela. During the six-month journey, he made over 100 recordings of his solo impressions in various sacred spaces, where he examined the acoustic characteristics of selected places. A year earlier, together with his partner Agnieszka Kabath, he lived and recorded his improvisations in an old chapel in Vin Sur Caramy in Provence, where he immersed himself in prayer and meditation with sound, recording several dozen hours of music. Curious to learn, during his journey he reacts to interesting people, sometimes outstanding musical individuals. These informal, spontaneous meetings generate unique agreements at a deep level. One of the most important in his life is the visit to the double bass player Barre Phillips, with whom he spent time talking and making music together. Similar events were visits to the home of Antoin Rooney in New York, and the home of drums, Ngom Babu Herim, in Zanzibar. Face-to-face meetings with the masters are key moments in the development of his musical personality.
Traveling around the world, he reacts to situations and places with which he interacts
sound, often experimenting with acoustics, objects and instruments. He did
musical journeys to Africa, Asia, North America and a large part of Europe, including residences significant for the artist in the Faroe Islands, Ukraine, Serbia, Switzerland and Portugal, where he had the opportunity to deeply confront the local creative environments, co-creating or participating in various projects and music meetings.
Piotr Damasiewicz - Into the Roots “Watra”
The genesis of Piotr Damasiewicz - Into the Roots should be taken in two leading dimensions, defined in the name of the project itself. Entering the roots, which is each time an exit determined by the need for another entry, concerns ethnicity and natural expression, the context of the place, its spirit and cultural specificity. You can recall facts about significant events for Into the Roots and thus classify them as moments when it all started. The problem is that this is quite an arbitrary kind of chronology. The official establishment of Into the Roots in Norway was a comeback at first, because all the baggage of improvisation, indigenous feeling and groove resulted from the mood and artistic attitude of Piotr Damasiewicz and three musicians long before this stage. It is therefore more appropriate to talk about the extraordinary genesis beyond time in the sense of the beginning or the end, where the place affects the musicians who are in it.
In the pastoral atmosphere of the Stavanger fjords, thanks to Monika Cichocka, Piotr Damasiewicz plays the first concert with Into the Roots in the spirit of an alliance of avant-garde and ethnicity. The sound of bells, sheep and the blowing wind turn out to be an analogy of improvisation and the undefined shape of beauty, which Piotr Damasiewicz has been so close to practically since forever. For him, the uniqueness results from the indispensability of what is in the depth. Places where you can experience it very quickly become special to him, and this is the case of Sucha Beskidzka. Characteristic of Into the Roots Suchą Beskidzka, Piotr Damasiewicz visited for the first time many years ago, in 2006 - “I was still studying in Katowice then. My friends who were already in Sucha told me about Cofeina Jazz Cafe and recommended this club. They were not wrong. A great atmosphere prevailed in it for a long time. At that time, it was run by Bogdan Fałowski, its founder. Today, Cofeina Jazz Cafe is following the blow and is not only a jazz cafe and club, but also a place for art and an organizer of artistic events. "
Piotr Damasiewicz quickly met Wiesław Francuz, who lives in Śpiwle, for friends of "Vincz" who has musicians from all over the world among his friends. - “He hosted us and we became friends quickly. He made sure that we did not miss anything. I met jazz and folk musicians at Vincz's, I played with musicians from the Sucha County. I learned folk melodies from them, and they got familiar with jazz. It was then that I dreamed of an album that would combine jazz with highlanders' culture, with a pastoral atmosphere ”. The idea was realized. The musicians met at the house of Wiesław Francuz's grandfather, and now his friend Kasia Wysoczyńska, and recorded the material. Among them was Jan Ryt, who played the bagpipes and pipes. – On the album you can hear a bit of Norway, Africa, including Morocco and Tanzania, and Polish mountains - says Piotr Damasiewicz. Due to the fact that the album was recorded in Śpiwle, it got its name as well. The songs contained therein are presented by radio stations, and the album was chosen the album of the year by the listeners and readers of RadioJazz.fm and Jazzpress. Piotr Damasiewicz got to know more and more musicians from Sucha Beskidzka belonging to local highlander bands, among others during joint carol singing with Mr. Stanisław - one of the mentors and musical guardians in this region. This is how he met Natalia, Kamila, Alicja Krzeszowiak as well as Jan, Paweł and Krzysztof Ryty, i.e. musicians from Ziemia Suska and Ziemia Suska.
"When it was after Śpiwla was released, I felt it was time to broaden the sound and reach deeper into the ethnic and folk musical dimension, going further to expand the composition with singing and strings, and to introduce more musical content, which will no longer be just an addition, but in largely a starting point, a component of the whole. This is how the double album "WATRA" was created. I wanted to refer to the tradition of music-making in a highlander cottage, as it traditionally takes place, and combine it with a jazz club, where jamming is also a natural part of it. Music from the vicinity of Babia Góra was combined with jazz and the sounds of the world that accompanied me during my many years of travel ”.
