Ewa Liebchen - Dizzy Divinity

Bogusław Schaeffer - Piano Concerto No 4

Bogusław Schaeffer - Missa Sinfonica

Piotr Peszat - Music for Culture Wars

Julius Eastman EVIL

Miłosz Pękala - Monopercussion 2

Monopercussion 2 is the second expedition of Miłosz Pękala - a virtuoso of modern, jazz, experimental and avant pop percussion - into the world of idiophones and membranophones treated soloistically, though supported by twisted electronics, also the ones that are very hardly heard in philharmonic halls, such as the Brazilian pandeiro or the Indian tabla. After all, new rhythms are not to be found in classical composition textbooks. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the list of composers of Monopercussion 2 comprises masters of jazz, ethnic and rock percussion: Thymme Jones (American band Cheer-Accident) or Sergio Krakowski from Brazil, besides Paweł Mykietyn or Miłosz Pękala himself.

MICHAŁ GÓRCZYŃSKI: REGIONS

Bogusław Schaeffer: B.S. Jazz

JAGD

JAGD are four hunting signals. The trumpeter Emil Miszk, accompanied by four musicians and co-authors of the compositions: Hubert Zemler, Kuba Sokołowski, Miłosz Pękala and Jerzy Rogiewicz, undertook to interperate them. In the context of biological survival, hunting is an anachronistic and irrational performance of cruelty. The hunting performance is cruel because it is not honest and attempts to defend its legitimacy are based on despicable premises (the animals being fed create new populations, these become surplus, and there appears an ecologically justified need to shoot). Hunting signals are the melodies that accompany the pokot - the ceremony of laying out the game, which crowns the hunt. Placed on their right side, dead animals are bid farewell by a signallist, and a different tune is assigned to each type of game. In JAGD, we are dealing with an attempt to re-appropriate hunting signals, to make them our own again, to annex them to another territory. At the same time, it is an attempt to turn towards animals by symbolically stealing their signs. It is a timid gesture, although a significant one, as it founds the music which - by transforming and distorting hunting signals - is anti-hunting in its substance.

KUST

NIEWTE Osmętnica Electronica

BASKAK (ANTONI BEKSIAK): electronics, voice, whistling, objects, trap set
MANIUCHA BIKONT: voice, clarinet, pipes, various instruments and objects
MACIEJ FILIPCZUK: fiddle (left, tracks 3, 8 and 11 solo), squeezebox
MARCIN LORENC: fiddle (right, track 5 solo), bass fiddle

Duchnowski / Bojanowicz - Devil`s Fiddle MK

A duet is probably the most involving performance formula that I do.

Probably because the dialogue gives unlimited possibilities of self-presentation, yet at the same time neutralises radical subjectivism and unitarian formula of artistic expression. It is a synthesis of rich, unlimited forms of sound expression, functioning in relation and constituting mutual reference points.

What is crucial in such a performance form is an extraordinary partner. Magdalena Bojanowicz is an artist, a cello virtuoso with unique features defining her open attitude. She finds herself perfectly well in both classical and contemporary repertoire.

For Magdalena, cello and electronics are rather incompatible worlds, perhaps occupying distant poles of her musical experience. For me - on the contrary: these are forms that can complement each other beautifully. Our meeting is an attempt to transcend the limits of human weakness, a peculiar pact with the devil, which gives powers that go beyond material reality and allows us to realise an integral, multidimensional musical being.

RPA / Duchnowski - Devil`s Fiddle

DIABELSKIE SKRZYPCE [DEVIL`S FIDDLE] is a staged concert devoted to the figure of a local village musician. Those who claim that the greatest fiddlers of the past have simply played to dancing, are very much mistaken. Rather, they acted as a kind of guides to complexities of a specific rite or ceremony, they were mediators between the real and the spiritual world, very often exposing themselves to adverse impacts of demonic reality. It is not without reason that rural records very often feature stories about fiddlers having supernatural powers. Still alive today are stories about musicians raising their own incubi, owning some magical items, about their supernatural ability to damage strings of a fiddler playing in another band or forcing the violin to play alone.

This continually vivid transgressive power of traditional fiddle and traditional music making is consistently advocated by Radical Polish Ansambl who made their début at the CODES festival in 2018. This time, these passionate promoters of Radical Polish Culture have invited an outstanding Polish composer of electro-acoustic music, Cezary Duchnowski, an illustrious avant-garde cellist Mikołaj Pałosz, and a versatile singer Maniucha Bikont.

They chose some authentic mazurka melodies and a unique instrument, the devil’s fiddle of Lejaren Hiller. This American pioneer of computer music, while staying in Poland in the 1970s, came across a traditional instrument widely used rural ceremonies in the Kaszuby and Kurpie regions, and developed it to the level of an exquisite virtuoso instrument. The reconstruction of Lejaren Hiller’s devil’s fiddle in combination with inscrutable musical capabilities of Cezary Duchnowski will take the CODES’ audience back to the mythical times of fiddlers-witch doctors.

Boleslaw Błaszczyk i inni - Ptacy i ludzie. Ballada dokumenalna o Eugeniuszu Rudniku

Ewa Liebchen - Goodnight Mr Górecki

The dewdrop world
Is the dewdrop world
Yet it is

Kobayashi Issa

Opera o Polsce

Pole, who are you? This film collage that combines archival and contemporary materials, documentary and staged pictures, press reports, social announcements, sale offers and speech excerpts is an attempt to answer this question. Referring to the Polish tradition of a creative documentary in the style of Wojciech Wiszniewski, the film presents various manifestations of Polishness: patriotic and religious rituals, everyday traditions as well as characteristic landscapes or intimate memories from childhood.

Arsenije Jovanović LA PARATTA

...In this very specific moment I suddenly had the impression that all three of us were a unit - me, the sailor and the bird, who  ew down to us like he came straight from the universe. Everything around us was quiet. There was no wind, which was also the reason why we couldn´t sail. The only sound which broke through the silence was the regular chitter of the engine. We were like a small closed organism. We were forming our own universe, it was like all the connections to the rest of the world were broken. [...] This little creature was so tired, he was mute and sleeping all the time. [...] Maybe the sailor was right - maybe the little bird really tried to escape the war, away from the mountains where the shooting started, away from the bad energy of the people who were preparing for the war. This negative energy is enough for animals to know that something terrible is going to happen. And this feeling of the bird was a feeling a lot of us had, also me and the sailor. Thuis terrible fear...

Mgła zdaje się przychodzić z zewnątrz

The Passenger by Zofia Posmysz has a long history riddled with a huge number of coincidences and plot twists. However, its most important or even foundational experience is the author’s visit to Paris. She travelled there as a Polish Radio correspondent on the inaugural flight between Warsaw and Paris in 1946. She only had a couple of hours to see the city, so she went to the centre and there, in the noisy and crowded Concorde Square, she heard the voice of the guard she was subordinate to as a prisoner in Auschwitz. And with that voice came the past – forcefully, like violent wind. The past which had cumulated in the memory of
her body, causing her to become stiff and paralysed, bringing fear which had been smouldering deep inside her and had never really vanished. The voice, as it turned out, belonged to someone else entirely, but the experience became a source of Posmysz’s reflection on the nature of sound...

Lumpeks

Strycharski / Drazkov - Plantae Carnivorae

Planta carnivora est planta quae partem alimentorum (sed non energiam) ex captis animalibus aut protozois, praecipue insectis aliisque arthropodis trahit. Plantae carnivorae hanc proprietatem per selectionem naturalem consecutae sunt quia in solo nitrogenio aliisque nutrimentis carente crescunt. Plantae carnivorae in quinque ordinibus et plus quam duodecim generibus reperiuntur.

Patryk Zakrocki: Post-pandemic Music

Only as a lack of personal hygiene can I understand my wallowing in this falt, in-variable life I lead, this dust of filth stuck on the surface of never changing. We should wash our destiny the way we wash our body, and change life the way we change clothes - not to preserve life, as when we eat and sleep, but out of objective self-respect, which is the essence of personal hygiene.

 Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Roman Haubenstock-Ramati Decisions / Study in Form (Ablinger/ Fell / Friedl / Lehn

Roman Haubenstock-Ramati noticed the limitations of the serial method at an early stage of his creative work. According to him, the key problem was in the following paradox: works created according to the method gave their authors the status of a creator in total control over their material, and at the same time submitted them to the dictates of rigorous solutions imposed by the logic of the procedure. Such pieces, thus, did not limit discoveries in material, but definitely impacted the inventiveness of the form. For Haubenstock-Ramati, the distinction between matter and form, and between the fundamentally different methods of their development (through discovery and invention, respectively), became a starting point for his departure from the serial method. The ban on repetition was a limitation which most prominently hindered invention at the level of form. Haubenstock-Ramati saw potential in inspirations drawn from beyond the sphere of music. His encounter with Alexander Calder’s mobiles became his catalyst. This Paris-based American sculptor developed a method of creating suspended forms which, when moved by air, constantly changed their configurations and positions. A mobile is, therefore, a set of possibilities planned by the author that assume different forms depending on external conditions. The composer imagined each of such components as a closed form that becomes dynamic in relation to other closed forms. This kind of arrangement of components allows repetition as a method of exploring different properties of such forms, because the performance of the forms supposes that different properties will become apparent (audible) depending on the context in which they are presented. It can be compared to the process of looking at a sculpture: the time taken to walk around it allows us to experience not different forms, but different aspects of the same form. And, yet again, the topological metaphor returns and introduces the third dimension into musical scores.

Agnieszka Pindera - Patkowski. Ambasador muzyki z Marsa

Bogusław Schaeffer - Dialogues

Schaeffer did not avoid situations in which the threat of revealing a lack of textural ingenuity would be greater than when composing for nine instruments, including two xylorimbas, two celestas, two harpsichords and two vibraphones. He also composed for two pianos, for piano four-hands, and even for a clavichord. This album invites you to listen to five such pieces presenting the composer’s strategy of attention to “texture in the service of form and expression,”but which are also free of “shortcuts.”

Lucia Dlugoszewski - Openings of the (eye)

Lucia Długoszewski was a daughter of Polish immigrants and a would-be student of medicine who gave up everything to develop her artistic passions. A student of Edgar Varèse, seems to be one of the most interesting and the most forgotten of the New York school composers.

Robert Piotrowicz - EUZEBIO

The new album by Robert Piotrowicz does not fit any category. What this multicoloured electronic instrumentation aims to channel is the acoustic experience and energy of the performing musician. As a result of a wide range of creative means used, the narrative language of the compositions bursts with tension and mystery.

Sokołowski / Stasiewicz - ERRATA

A joint project by the pianist Kuba Sokołowski and visual artist Paweł Stasiewicz focuses on the presentation of the unlimited sound possibilities of total piano and the dramaturgical consequences of the use of graphic notation. Classical piano music is confronted here with noise textures created through the use of everyday objects to prepare instruments. Their stylized compositions allude to the sonoristic traditions of the Polish school of composition and to the explorations of the German experimental scene, especially those of Reinhold Friedl.

Szábolcs Esztényi / Jakub Sokolowski - CREATIVE MUSIC

Creative Music is a cycle of open and semi-improvised pieces characterised by unique technique and sensitivity and composed by Szábolcs Esztényi—the composer for Szábolcs Esztényi—the pianist. I was able to enter this intimate world thanks to long conversations with this extraordinary artist on the subject of contemporary performance and improvisation, which we held during my studies at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and later, after my graduation. I was fascinated with Creative Music because of the opportunity it offered to create a very condensed material in real time and to utilise the vast set of formal improvisational techniques developed by Szábolcs Esztényi. From this extensive cycle I have chosen three compositions which are very different when it comes to their forms and sound.

Szábolcs Esztényi - FOR ANDRZEJ BIEŻAN

The music of Andrzej Bieżan is usually associated with improvisation, with his versatile work in intuitive music and his compositions for magnetic tape created at the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio. However, in the Bieżan archive, carefully maintained by his sister, Ewa Bieżan, one can find many sketches as well as finished instrumental and vocal compositions which utilize both traditional and graphic notation. Part of this material is music for theatre performances. Some of the scores are autonomous pieces. Among them, there is a string quartet, a violin concerto, a composition for an orchestra and many sketches as well as a couple of finished piano and chamber forms. Bieżan liked to improvise during his performances and only rarely, if at all, played noted piano compositions live. Today, thanks to the selection made by professor Szábolcs Esztényi, we can listen to the interesting propositions of this composer who died before his time.

Radical Polish Ansambl

Radical Polish Ansambl is a utopian attempt to combine the most archaic elements of the Polish countryside traditions with the most avant-garde elements of contemporary experimental music.

Kuba Krzewiński - Incorporate

Two musicians map and stroke their string instruments, testing their sound, bodies and the boundaries of their own private spaces. Two other musicians sit opposite one another and, in a choreography of gestures, play the sounds of an imaginary piano and bass drum. The latter is also played by another performer who uses sign language to sing a song about strangeness, accompanied by a solemn double bass player. Finally, in theclean, white interior bows move across bare skin, and heads are adorned with horse-tail, not human, hair. All this is emphasized by the rising ambient based on instrumental samples. Kuba Krzewiński’s compositions have a strong performative aspect which makes listening to them in just audio difficult to imagine, so publishing a DVD is no whim. They are indeed the new, multimedia chamber music which is situated at the intersection of arts, sound and image, gesture and touch, and takes up themes which go beyond music. At the same time, the author himself—just like earlier Jagoda Szmytka or Wojtek Blecharz—is a fervent supporter of the fight against the incorporeality of contemporary music. The Polish scene is evidently going through a performative turn, as proven by the record in your hands.

Birthday Party

Everything started in January 1959. It was when the first autonomous composition was created at the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, which had been established only 2 years earlier. The piece marked the beginning of Polish electronic music, and 60 years is an entire era! What seemed at that time to be new, impossible, abstractly alluring, today sounds with a note of nostalgia and fits into the overwhelmingly popular trend of retromania, which was also characteristic of the old avant-garde. We can’t deny that we miss the old school!

Etiuda na jedno uderzenie w talerz (Study on One Cymbal Stroke) by Włodzimierz Kotoński was the first of its kind. To celebrate the Study’s 60th birthday, Polish composers were commissioned by Program 2 of Polish Radio to create works inspired by the piece. “Birthday Party” album is a recording of this unique concert.

Opera for the Deaf

The intuition about what the world of the Deaf could look like came at the very end. After going through all of the obligatory points in these kinds of projects: about exclusion, clash of cultures, violence and liberation. A shadow of an understanding flickered into existence in a moment of greatest misunderstanding—when the hearing musicians, directors, librettists and the Deaf actors, poets and dancers were unable to create an ending together for the “Opera for the Deaf”, a piece they had been all working on. That is why the performance, which premiered in November 2018 at the STUDIO The­atre Gal­leryin Warsaw, has two different endings and essentially tells two different stories, although they share the same order of scenes, images and sounds.

MUSIQUETTE B: Karlhienz Stockhausen - Stimmung

Stockhausen composed "Stimmung" in 1968 at home with two small children in the adjacent room—decided to “communicate” with his surroundings in an unusual way. The composition was written for six vocalists and required a special vocal technique (overtone singing) as well as total unification. The author prepared a precise “instruction manual.” Each artist could choose from eight (women) or nine (men) rhythmic vocal models and from cards of magical names of deities from different cultures (to juggle them freely). All this to create a sequence of fluid 51 formulas (sections), each lead by a different vocalist serving as a guide—the coryphaeus. The composer joked that he “wrote a 75-minute piece based on one B-flat ninth chord.” In practice, this B sound (which is continuously renewed) shimmers, thanks to aliquots, with changing tone, contrasts, intensity. It pulls into a trance and overwhelms. “STIMMUNG is certainly meditative music. Time is suspended”—Stockhausen commented. “One listens to the interior of the sound, to the interior of the harmonic spectrum, to the interior of the vowel, to the interior.” Despite the piece’s specific vocal technique, acoustic aura and peculiar philosophy, “entering” STIMMUNG is not an arduous process. What is important is the declaration of co-participation of joint experiencing, sensing, cleansing. Of listening to oneself and to one’s surroundings. Of inner and outer harmony. Complete freedom.

Głowicka & The Airport Society: Unknown, I Live With You

The texts adapted for the libretto of "Unknown, I live with you" were created by Afghani female poets in the period of strongest political supremacy of Taliban’s regime. The authors, known as Roya, Meena Z., Fattemah AH, and Freshta, conceived their poems during clandestine creative writing workshops under the online Afghan Women’s Writing Project, supported by activists from local organizations. The texts combine great simplicity with powerful expression. Confronting a typically Western “high-art” music form with the power of resistance to the fundamentalist, religious retrotopia – which literally realizes the fundamental patriarchal idea of the inferiority and serfdom of women – says a lot about the present. It emphasizes the continuum of precarious female condition characteristic for social orders founded upon patriarchal ideas of religion.

Karkowski / Encumberance /Gęba

It can be assumed that Karkowski’s intention was to formulate dialogues and combine rudimentary electronic sounds with their human-produced mimicries (with the use of amplification). Encumbrance, as an “intentional object” (Roman Ingarden), comprises a sketch score, written instructions and one sound sample, by way of example. The composer also provided us with Pure Data visual programming language patches, but I do not know if they have ever been directly used for a performance. Karkowski himself requested old-fashioned Brüel & Kjær sine generators, such as the ones used at the Experimental Studio, and we managed to acquire them from Polish Radio thanks to the help of the engineer Wojciech Makowski. According to the composer, these were the only pieces of equipment capable of generating pure sine waves. All the vocal techniques were developed, or at least verified, by the vocalists while working with the composer in December 2009.

trio_io WAVES

Our music is a product of three minds, three different musical languages, three different origins. Our meeting gave rise to open forms which draw inspiration from the tradition of music by contemporary composers, experiments with prepared instruments and elements of free jazz and folk music. Our music can simply be classified as new music.

The io trio was established in the autumn of 2017 in Katowice, Poland. Their debut album was recorded in the summer of 2018 in Bydgoszcz. It was only the beginning of their joint explorations.

Populista present Raphael Rogiński plays Henry Purcell (feat. Olga Mysłowska & Sebastian Witkowski)

I feel a very intimate relation with English culture thanks to my admiration to the music of the 60s...

Czarny pokój i inne pokoje Zbiór tekstów o Studiu Eksperymentalnym Polskiego Radia

Mazurek/Sienkiewicz - Drogi

Drogi is my hommage to Polish Radio Experimental Studio, a pioneering center for electraocustic music, and one of the Studio`s outstadning composers - Bohdan Mazurek.

Jacek Sienkiewicz

Andrzej Dobrowolski - Music for Orchestra

It is tempting to see the history of Polish contemporary music as a succession of simple oppositions. Avant-garde versus reaction, sonorism versus New Romanticism, tape versus orchestra. The case of Andrzej Dobrowolski (1921–1990) undermines these dialectical systems and breaks free from the established order (similarly to the cases of Tomasz Sikorski or Roman Haubenstock-Ramati).

Polonka - Poemat konfesyjny

The trio Pole was created in 2011. The band composed of Piotr Zabrodzki, Michał Górczyński and Jan Emil Młynarski debuted with the album Radom published by Kilogram Records. After a couple of years, the trio changed their name to Polonka. The record Poemat konfesyjny (Religious Poem) was published in the autumn of 2018 by Bôłt Records. The instruments used by Polonka include a positive organ, a clavichord (Zabrodzki), a contrabass clarinet (Górczyński) and a percussion and percussion instruments (Młynarski). From the very beginning, the trio’s goal has been to combine rhythms, musical motives and inspirations from places that are both geographically distant and musically close to each other (Africa, Europe, America). On their newest album, the trio are very consistent in pursuing the artistic goal they had chosen for themselves and combine styles and trends of folk music from different continents, while at the same time drawing inspiration from the avant-garde, as well as improvising and contemplating sounds, melodic patterns and rhythms.

Barbara Kinga Majewska & Marcin Masecki: Taratil ‘id al-milad

The carols recorded by Barbara Kinga Majewska and Marcin Masecki are the songs for the time of contempt that we live in. The era of rising xenophobia replacing care and empathy in relation to the growing number of defenceless victims of wars, conflicts and other calamities. When thousands of unwanted strangers, searching for shelter from a certain death, die at the gates of fortified Europe, we cannot sing about any joyful news as we have always done.

MUSIQUETTE A: Terry Riley - In C

Today, In C resounds all around the world. We are aware of this fact, but as we were inspired by the African performance in Bamako (Africa Express) and the Indian performance in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Raga Massive), we wished to give Riley’s “cells” a local, Polish flavor. Thus, at the stage of the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio, the xylophone, clarinet and violin were accompanied by the cimbalom, hurdy-gurdy, and the Polish three-row accordion (which had been immensely popular in the Polish countryside, but was supplanted by cheaper accordions after World War II). Riley’s „sheet of paper” spun in the rhythm of mazurka, gained a folk drone and wept with the cimbalon. The positive organ introduced a sacred element, and the piano—the echoes of a bourgeois salon. We were not the first, but it was the first time In C was performed in such a line-up.

Szabolcs Esztényi / Hubert Zemler - KREATURA

Kreatura is a meeting of two excellent Warsaw artists who are divided by two generations, but joined by their love for formal minimalism, the rare ability to improvise (understood as composing in real time), and a special kind of sensitivity towards isolated sounds. Combined together, Szabolcs Esztényi’s piano and Hubert Zemler’s percussion sound like a ritualistic orchestra from Sirius. 

Ewa Liebchen - Electric Sheep

A large portion of music created in the second half of the 20th century revolves around the story of a meeting between man and machine. Around tales of machines pretending to be living musicians. Or of people pretending to be music-making machines. The solo debut of the flutist Ewa Liebchen is a sentimental recollection of these struggles, which are best reflected by the words of an English poet:

So pleasant while becoming inspiration. 
As though unseen upon awakening, 
Was driven by divine hallucination! 
An ancient mental madness contemplating.

That wondrous loving soul subconscious theme! 
For those who had forgotten hope and waking, 
To any great fantastic lucid dream! 
This timeless mortal mind is very aching.

A strange eternal secret visionary, 
Yet another lonely episode! 
The thoughts of love forever legendary, 
A moment from an endless poem ode.

A wonder where the future falls asleep, 
Dream of something like electric sheep.

A large portion of music created in the second half of the 20th century revolves around the story of a meeting between man and machine. Around tales of machines pretending to be living musicians. Or of people pretending to be music-making machines. The solo debut of the flutist Ewa Liebchen is a sentimental recollection of these struggles, which are best reflected by the words of an English poet:

Corneliu Dan Georgescu - Model Mioritic

The basic story of the ballad is simple: three shepherds are driving their flocks into the valley. Two of the shepherds decide to kill the third, for he is more beautiful, richer, stronger, his flock is bigger. A yearling sheep – the Mioriţa – from his flock reveals the murder plan to him. The shepherd does not think to defend himself, he only prepares his funeral. He wants to be buried near his flock, not far from the hut; above his grave flutes of reed and a bucium (alphorn) shall hang on which the wind plays. He asks the Lamb to seek and comfort his mother, for he found a wonderful bride, "the bride of the world". In this context, death (which is feminine in Romanian) appears as a wedding in which all nature - animals, plants, stars - participate.

Octavian Nemescu - Apokatastasis

Everything belongs to one convention or other, but some conventions have become archetypes – and this moment of transition is what Octavian Nemescu finds the most interesting. When nature transforms into archetype – not only in terms of rhetoric, but also melodics, form and perception. Many of the composers ideas have ancient roots, and he tangles these roots with the virtuosity of a post-modernist – a soulful post-modernist, nonetheless. This is not about fun, there is no “poly-”, no “sur-”, this is about syncretism for the greater good. The aim is to create an egregore, a thoughtform that would lead the listeners towards transcendence. This can be achieved through a collective ritual – mentioned in the subheading of the NonSymphony No. 5

Twentytwentyone, Diissc Orchestra ‎– Split

The perennial question posed by a vinyl enthusiast is almost exactly the same as the one Alice asked herself (and the kitten) one winter afternoon, standing in front of the mirror: ‘What will I find on the other side?’ What is the logic behind the (sound) world on this and on the other side? A hit and its double, or a lyrical song and its dub version? In the case of the mirror and the vinyl record, the other side remains unceasingly a puzzle, a mystery piling up questions and inspiring curiosity. The logic and the policy of a digital recording and its typical carrier, which a compact disc has become, are completely different, while the vinyl record itself rather resembles Borges’ memorable ‘Disk of Odin’, which is the only thing in the world that ‘has just one side’. The other side doesn’t exist, and so the mystery vanishes. There’s no need to ask the question posed by Alice: are words the same there,
or are they written backwards?

Bartek Kujawski - Puerile Things Inferno

Nie będę niczego tłumaczył, bo wszystko tłumaczy się samo. ELO 
٩(◕‿◕)۶

Tomasz Sikorski - Twilight

To say that Sikorski’s music is thought-inspiring is not enough. What is more important, it forces us to feel, react, vibrate. And in the case of the repertoire presented in this album, it introduces us to the very essence of the piano. Sikorski’s understanding of the instrument and its possibilities was remarkable. His sounds pierce through us. Only the composer, who fully existed within this sphere of sound, could so convincingly deal with the consequences of the sound’s harmony and repetition, its crescendo and decrescendo, its silence. Tension in Sikorski’s music results from the possibility and willingness to both reveal and conceal emotions with a single stroke of the pen. Passion expressed, passion suppressed, beauty, intensity, solitude, richness of sound and shortage are its essence.

Darryl Rosenberg

Musiquette. Improvisations on Górecki

We began with performing the original work, then we played a certain conceptual game. We imagined landing on a strange planet and trying to recreate "Lerchenmusik" without access to any notes and recordings. We attempted to answer the question about what was truly important for us in the piece. On the third day, we didn't think about the original score trying to recreate what we had performed 24h earlier. It became a sort of Chinese whispers.

Zygmunt Krauze: Folk Music

In Poland, for the last two decades and particularly in recent years there has been a growing need for a reinterpretation of the peasant class and especially its culture. It is difficult, perhaps, to unambiguously ascribe Zygmunt Krauze's folkloristic output to intentional, notional harbingers of those re-evaluations, but it certainly became a powerful antithesis to the protectional "polishing" that peaked a quarter of a century earlier. In Krauze, an unconventional attitude is combined with an "immersion" (to use the composer's own word) in the sound environment, resulting in work that is fresh, original and - against the Polish background of its times - distinctive.

Miłosz Pękala - Monopercussion

For me, closeness and interaction are very important in my contact with the world that extends just below the layer of skin that protects me. I am not fond of superficiality; I prefer deep and developed relationships. They are not easy, of course: they require time and energy. Closest to my inner soundworld are percussion instruments. I have been working on my relationship with them for many years. MONOPERCUSSION represents a summary of the current state of our intimacy. 

Bogusław Schaeffer - Travel Notes

Most of Bogusław Schaeffer’s electroacustic works emerged in the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. Among the works produced there in the years 1966-1978 were 15 autonomous compositions, 6 illustrations for the film and 11 works for the theatre and outdoor spectacle. The "Travel Notes" album assembles 5 out of 10 works created by Schaeffer outside Warsaw (in Berlin, Belgrae and Stockholm among others) in the exceptionally fertile eighth decade of the 20th century.

Alessandro Bosetti: The Notebooks

Leoš Janáček used to scribble notes and record the speech melodies that he heard everywhere around him...

DJ Lenar - Dritte Shtilkayt

Album dedicated to memory of all Polish Jews and their great culture...

Arturas Bumšteinas - Musikaliszer Pinkos

Musikaliszer Pinkos is the title of a collection of more than two hundred Hebrew religious chants compiled and published by cantor Abraham Berenstein in 1927 in Vilna, Poland (today Vilnius, Lithuania).

Strycharski/Andriessen - Ghost

The story of this album began with the idea of composing my response to Melodie – one of the Louis Andriessen's pieces dedicated to Frans Brüggen.

Wojtek Blecharz: Liminal Studies

Wojciech Blecharz is somewhat an exhibitionist. An emotional one, of course.

Hubert Zemler: Puppation of Dissonance

The latest Hubert Zemler's release entitled „Pupation of Dissonance” makes a sort of tribute to percussion music history.

Żywizna plays Zaświeć Niesiącku and other Kurpian songs

Populista is proud to present a new music reinterpratation by Raphael Rogiński. After Coltrane, he is now paired by Genowefa Lenarcik to perform music from Kurpie. The singer is a daughter of legendary Stanisław Brzozowy, famous caretaker of kurpian folk, the tradition she is now developing. According to Rogiński, the only musicians he can compare her with are bluesmen from Sahara. Together, they form a duo just as unconventional as natural. In the end, Żywizna in kurpian language stands for Nature.

Andrzej Kwieciński UMBRAE Royal String Quartet

The four works on this CD, ranging in date from 2004 to 2014, form an integral part of Andrzej Kwiecińki's creative development and at the same time demonstrate his particular affinity with music for strings.

Małgorzata Sarbak / Paweł Szymański: Dissociative Counterpoint Disorder

Andrzej Chłopecki, the late critic and animator of the music scene, wrote extensively about Szymański's music as well as supporting the composer by means of his longtime role with the Warsaw Autumn festival. Chłopecki puts things thus: "the formal structure is beautiful while stylistic expression is calculated: for Szymański's music is a continual game." He then offers precedents in Johannes Ockeghem and Anton Webern, deducing that Szymański's "guiding principles would be speculation and constructivism." Rendering the loaded quality in the composer's works, Chłopecki adds that "the aim of Szymański's music is the creation of symbolic entities within abstract art forms."

Dominik Karski: GLIMMER Flute o'clock

The works on this disc present a story of my love affair with the flutes. It started in 2002 when I was writing Glimmer, which awoke my fascination with the low flutes, especially the bass flute, then turning into an obsession, as two bass flute solos saw the light of day the following year... The love affair, however, could not have been so fruitful if I hadn’t crossed paths one day with the two musicians from Flute o’clock: Ewa Liebchen and Rafał Jędrzejewski.

Dominik Karski

Barbara Kinga Majewska and Emilia Sitarz play Franz Schubert Winterreise

Interpratations of Barbara Kinga Majewska and Emilia Sitarz are crazy, funny, touching, sad, passionate, icy, irreverent, charming, sharp, ironic, tender, sweet, sensual, repulsive, ostensibly true and movingly artificial. Most of all however, they are a consistent, unhesitating and precise story of high integrity, not easy to forsee though, even for Winterreise's experts.

Populista presents Richard Youngs plays Parallel Winter

It was a cold and windy day, a classic of pre-winter Warsaw, cold, wet, transparent yet at the same time grey, or perhaps mostly grey. It was also a day of the first Warsaw show of Richard Youngs in Komuna// Warszawa. Not fully by accident, there was a piano in the room, which made Richard propose performing „Parallel Winter”.

Alessandro Bosetti: Stille Post. Radio Works: 2003-2011

Joanna Halszka Sokołowska plays Franz Schubert Winterreise

The album is in a way a field recording of a night session in the theatre. In less than two hours, her singing was captured with no rehearsals, in one go, and was followed by no overdubs or other studio treatments. It seems to be closer to Richard Young's „Parallel Winter” than the other take on Schubert. Perhaps because they both share a thoroughly camouflaged conceptual content uniting all the details and formal decisions with the content interpretation.

John Tilbury, Derek Bailey: Playing with a Dead Person

When you contacted me about the duos, I thought there is nothing more original than playing with a dead person […] which is curious because Derek is very much alive, especially when we hear his voice and I feel he's sort of sitting here, in the studio, and he's waiting for me and I'm waiting for him and we're not quite sure what's gonna happen.

Kazimierz Serocki: Pianophonie

The contemporary status of 'Forte e piano' and 'Pianophonie' is different. Forte e piano is one of Serocki’s lesser known and acclaimed works, while 'Pianophonie' is considered his greatest masterpiece. However, it’s worth remembering that 'Forte a piano' and 'Pianophonie' are interrelated. It’s difficult to imagine the latter without the former.

Iwona Lindstedt

John Tilbury, Zygmunt Krauze: Grand Tour

Tilbury left communist Poland in 1964 and his visits grew rare. He got involved with Cornelius Cardew’s Scrath Orchestra and the AMM; later he went on to become known for his performances of Morton Feldman’s compositions. Meanwhile Zygmunt Krauze, aside from his work in the Musical Workshop, grew to be his generation’s leading conceptual composer, mainly thanks to his reception of Władysław Strzemiński’s unism. The worlds of Krauze and Tilbury were sepa- rate, but adjacent.

Kamil Szuszkiewicz: Robot Czarek

Wszyscy wiedzą. Moja żona nie wie. Młodsza córka nie wie. Starsza córka wie. Wszyscy inni wiedzą. Zerkają porozumiewawczo. Zerkają porozumiewawczo na siebie. Wszyscy. Zerkają porozumiewawczo na siebie nawzajem. Wszyscy wiedzą.

Krzysztof Penderecki, Eugeniusz Rudnik: HOMO LUDENS

The studio became a meeting place for Eugeniusz Rudnik and Krzysztof Penderecki who, guided by the former, made his first forays into the fascinating world of electronic music. In the early 1960s the duo created over 30 movie and theatre scores. At first, scared of the high voltage inside the studio’s tape recorders, Penderecki leaves most of the work to Rudnik. However with time the two composers achieved great creative synergy, and their work seemed to take place in an atmosphere of ‘boyish horseplay’. They became homo ludens incarnate.

Tekla Mrozowicka, Marcin Cichy: Prominences

Prominences can last for many months just like unrealized love opens up a core of unstable emotions, left beyond the edge of the “Sun”, alternating between peaceful rides during the solar eclipse and strong spectral lines in its emission spectrum.
like the northern winds, prominences blow its solar spell straight inside of your chest. Delicate resonating textures surround you, light piano massages your brain, bells are whispering the secrets, keeping concept parts of its mystery.

15 Corners of the World, motion picture sound essay

The film 15 Corners of the World includes simul- taneous audio and images. Images do not supple- ment the music here, nor does the music simply illustrate the photos. Meanings, senses, feelings, and scenes are created where those two spheres cross. Without vision, there is no “moving of the viewer’s imagination, the inventory of his feelings, experiences, and associations”, as Eugeniusz Rudnik defines the goal of art in general.

Asi Mina: Jest LEKCJA jest TEMAT

Lenar, Masecki, Zrałek: Fortepian Chopina

Jak Warszawa pamięta, upamiętnia i co robi z pamięcią o Fryderyku Chopinie? Gdzie ta pamięć jest dobra, a gdzie zawodzi? O czym pamiętać nie chce, a gdzie przeradza się w mit? Kompozycja radiowa autorstwa trzech wywodzących się z różnych dziedzin sztuki warszawskich artystów Marcina Maseckiego, Wojtka Zrałka-Kossakowskiego i Marcina Lenarczyka to próba rekonstrukcji - bo "rekonstrukcja" to najwłaściwsze tu słowo - szeroko rozumianej pamięci o wielkim/największym/najbardziej polskim kompozytorze.

Philippe Petit: Ear Me In

Being a huge fan of compositions by Bernard Parmegiani, and especially of his magnificent "De Natura Sonorum", I decided to start working on an opus dealing with "Dynamic of the resonance and its incidences": a microphonic exploration of a single sound body made to resonate by means of different types of percussion.

Gintas K: Blind Man Tales

At the end of summer a couple of years ago I felt quite disappointed with my latest works. So, preparing program for a radio art festival I dropped occasionally more than 40 summer files to multichanel software. I started to listen and I was in astonished.... After some tiny corrections it became "Blind Man Tales".

Asi Mina: BIAŁO

Candelaria Saenz Valiente & Marcin Masecki: Hymnen

Anthems of countries that are not doing very well. The simplicity and the strength of this idea  is striking. Just like the ambiguity of the result. Because what is the project’s ultimate message? Guyana, Haiti, Vanuatu… - maybe it’s about the Western guilt? Or, on the contrary, Western post-colonialism? But neither Afghanistan nor Nepal, despite British efforts, have never been colonised. And Greece is the West „per se”. What about the economical interpretation, then? That sounds more like it. Especially that during the realisation of the project, Greek economical crisis was much more of a topic than it is now. But on the other hand, what if I tell you that Guyana has lower unemployment and higher GDP per capita rates than the average in the EU? And if - after telling you that - I tell you that it’s not true? Or if I ask you what is the capital city of Vanuatu? Let’s face it: if you’re an average citizen of the West , there is a big chance that you just don’t know and might not care…

Irinel Anghel, Sorin Romanescu – Guitar Hands on a Singing Body

The Romanian duo of Irinel Anghel (composer, singer, pianist and improviser) and Sorin Romanescu (composer, guitar player, sound designer) represents the experimental side of Romanian contemporary music, exploring uncharted territories, crossing paths and concepts such as "innerworld music", "sound food", "electronades", "SONeerie", "sound theatre", "darkroom music", "RenaiScienceFiction Electro music". Improvisation, spontaneity and instant chemistry give to their concerts and performances a freshness borne of the pure mystery of creation.

Octavian Nemescu – Musique pour descendre

Octavian Nemescu (b. 1940) is the last living exponent of the Romanian "golden series" (George Enescu, Stefan Niculescu, Aurel Stroe, Tiberiu Olah, Myriam Marbe and Anatol Vieru) and one of the leading composers of the second (and last) avant-garde. In contrast to the Darmstadt-oriented composers of the first avant-garde, the second avant-garde set it as its goal to discover the common, prior to everything else, Ur-foundation of just any music tradition. This search led to developing Romanian branches of spectral music and archetypal music.

Arturas Bumšteinas – Uniforms

In 'Uniforms' collection Arturas Bumšteinas employs, for one, imprecise (e.g. digital) notation of rythm and melody as well as audio-scores, that are standard recordings, imitated later freely by a performing musician. Instrumental material obtained in this manner, in many differing variants, is then often subjected to derivative treatment including editting and further processing. This is why traditional chamber and orchestral music occupies only a tiny place in a composer's overall output - its position being taken over by hybrid genres integrating the means and techniques of instrumental, electronic, and concrete music. 

Raphael Roginski plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes African mystic music

Guitars by Raphael Roginski
Voice by Natalia Przybysz

Compositions by John Coltrane (1-3, 5-6, 8-10) and Raphael Roginski (4, 7)
Poems by Langston Hughes

Recorded by Michał Kupicz
Mastered by Sebastian Witkowski
Produced by Michal Libera
Cover art work by Aleksandra Waliszewska
Layout by Piotr Bukowski

Reinhold Friedl – Mutanza

This CD presents compositions for piano using the instrument in an unorthodox way. The strings are bowed with nylon strings, stimulated by E-Bows, rubbed with metal, the keys' sound is examined as a corrugated surface and staccato rhythms are repeated in a narrow register. On the one hand, the pieces introduced here explore new ways of playing the piano. In this sense they are "enlarged playing techniques", as they have been developed for most instruments in the second half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, the works confine themselves to selected material and raise the question to what extent the material already is the composition.

Robert Piotrowicz, Lukáš Jiřička – Samoobrona

Helmut Kajzar recorded Samoobrona. Magiczny manifest [Eng. Self-defence. The Magical Manifesto], his play written between 1974 and 1975,three times: once in the radio and twice at home, performing an amateur mix of its fragments with conversations and other private noise. These performances were autonomous materials ready for release. Nonetheless, the “staging” of Jiřička and Piotrowicz is to some extent more congruent with the spirit of the original work than any other performance, including the recordings made by the author himself. Instead of the text performed by a few voices in the theatrical space, we receive a two-channel narration which may be replayed using home equipment.

Głowicka: Seven Sonnets

Composed for quartet and countertenor, with Glowicka’s trademark technological infusion, the 50-minute song cycle unfolds an evocative journey. Nearly 400 years after the sonnets’ creation, the young composer adapted 3 of the poems into Summer’s Day in 1999. She then expanded the set with 4 more selections a decade later. The experience is yours to relish now, with the full effort compiled in this album – 4 centuries in the making.

Antanas Jasenka - Ancient Songs

'Ancient Songs' - the first album by Antanas Jasenka for Bôłt Records is the composer's selection of diverse pieces, from different phases and genres of his creative output, as well as a synthetic attempt at presenting his total artistic personality.

Zygmunt Krauze: Hommage à Strzemiński

I will be talking about my music, but I want you to realise that I am actually talking all the time about the source of that music which is the theory and work of Strzemiński. And that is because since the very beginning my music has been closely connected with it. It has actually been its source. In 1956, as a student of the Secondary School for Music, I went to a posthumous exhibition of Strzemiński’s works, and that day marked my future. First of all, I realized that I would become a composer, and I also understood how I would write my music.

Zygmunt Krauze

Sławomir Kupczak: Res Facta

Flute o’clock: Ewa Liebchen, Rafał Jędzejewski – flutes, objects
Szábolcs Esztényi – piano
Rafał Łuc – accordion
Sławomir Kupczak – electronics
Mastering: Cezary Duchnowski, Ewa Guziołek-Tubelewicz
Music Producer – Ewa Guziołek-Tubelewicz

Antanas Kučinskas – Parasite

Antanas Kučinskas' works from the collection 'Parasite' have been based on a method of re-composing, i.e. reworking certain historically and stylistically recognizable material by using techniques 'alien' to its nature. For a bunch of newly adopted techniques, including sampling, looping and scratching, Kučinskas coined the term 'Parasitic music'.

Tomasz Gwinciński Szkoła Bydgoska Tom 1 / Bromberg Schule

'Szkoła Bydgoska' is a breakthrough work on an artistic path of Tomasz Gwiciński – from an eclectic and ludic style of CD's 'Clever Nonsense', 'The Moon Music' and 'P. und der Wolf' reveals mature and trurly modern, original musical language of the composer.

GAMUT INC. Ex Machina

This LP came about as part of the project Avant Avantgarde. During the two-year project we created three acoustic music machines with the help of instrument builder and tireless experimenter Gerhard Kern. The Carillon is a 16-note Glockenspiel, the Physharmonika a kind of automated accordion, and the BowJo is made up of three double-chorded monochords, which are triggered by electromagnets. All of the instruments play autonomously and acoustically, but are controlled by computer. The recordings on this LP were made exclusively with these machines.

Michał Libera

Pole Reports from Space

The Polish Radio Experimental Studio has been, since its founding in 1957, a source of music associated with space imagery. The uniqueness of sounds, robotics, automation, interplanetary travel, spectacular crashes, and explosions of suns – all these could be accommodated in the  imagination of a creative sound engineer. Points of reference consisted in the sounds made by planes, rockets and weapons, whereas space emptiness and silence were incarnated by nebulae spatial sound, filled with reverb and echo. Almost always when there was a need in a film for the voices of green aliens, Warsaw engineers were asked for help.

Mirt: Solitaire

"If You play Mozart slower, it will sound like Beethoven"

(The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, dir. Guillaume Nicloux)

The credit for making me aware of the above quote must go to Michał Mendyk. Actually I should just leave it at that as it perfectly illustrates my approach to music in general. I remember when I got my first grammophone (that was a very long time ago). Apart from the standard rotational speed it offered also two additional ones: 16 and 78 rpm. I was able to slow down any record I wanted to - and as a matter of fact I used this opportunity a lot. Out of curiosity. In hope that a bad record would sound interesting. In order to here more...

Tyto Alba. 13 portraits of melancolics, birds and their co-hearing Michal Libera with Martin Küchen and Ralf Meinz

Sound essay, hörspiel, reading, electroacoustic music, plunderphonics, sound portraits, collection of songs or simply a sonic take on melancholia. Disposition or disease, melancholia is a rich psycho-territory full of apathy, depression, withdrawal, self-dismissal, hallucinations and alien voices. And hearing. In particular, suffering of the ears and peculiar way of listening related to it. In one of the footnotes in his essay „Stanzas”, Giorgio Agamben points out that the well known melancholic posture of a man leaning his head against the hand is actually an attempt to get away from suffering of his ringing ear.

Rinus van Alebeek & Michał Libera play Alvin Lucier Chambers

Rinus van Alebeek and Michał Libera set out for a dozen of excursions into Calabrian towns armed with Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' as a guide book, to recite, talk, read, listen, drink coffee, perform, play, record, play back... or: blow, bow, rub, explode, scrape, walk, ignore, talk, screw, dance, whistle, which are all suggestions of Alvin Lucier to make large and small resonant environments sound. The material recorded during these attempts to make invisible cities of Calabria sound was then composed by Rinus van Alebeek to form a road-audio-book.

Komuna// Warszawa plays Luc Ferrari Tautologos III

In 2011, the prose score of 'Tauologos III', served as framework for a chamber opera prepared in Komuna// Warszawa. Its core element consisted of three separate performances of a short fragment of Alfred Schnittke's String Trio. Violinist (Julia Kubica), violist (Wojciech Walczak) and cellist (Filip Rzytka) played their own parts of the given movement one after the other. Their performances were recorded live and finally overlapped and played back with no synchronization. The procedure was sprinkled and scattered by dance movements and lecture.

Ralf Meinz, Karolina Ossowska & Mikołaj Pałosz play Giuseppe Tartini La sonata il sol minore al terzo suono

In his 'Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armonia' published in 1754 Giuseppe Tartini laid out a mathematical proof of third tone's pitch as either sum or difference of the other two articulated pitches. The idea behind the performance of Karolina Ossowska (violin), Mikołaj Pałosz (cello) and Ralf Meinz (recording) was to search for the combination tones in Tartini's own music.

Tomasz Sikorski | Julius Eastman UNCHAINED

When dealing with art, we deal with mystery - something that needs to be pursued but remains impossible to satisfyingly explain or define. The mystery is obviously present in the works of this unusual pair of composers: Julius Eastman and Tomasz Sikorski.

Hubert Zemler: Gostak & Doshes

It’s Hubert Zemler’s second solo album. In opposition to the fully improvised concert album Moped, this one is filled with pieces which are pre-composed to a much greater extent. The album also contains two compositions inspired by electronic music, particularly by works of the ensemble Suaves Figures (Piotr Kurek and Sylvia Monnier).

Joanna Halszka Sokołowska: Msza

The album is a studio version of a chamber opera prepared by Joanna Halszka Sokołowska at Opera// REMIX at Komuna// Warszawa. The starting point was John Barton Wolgamot’s poem „In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were men and women”. The starting point was Robert Ashley’s composition „In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were men and women”. The starting point was bringing thousands of people together, everyone equal, nobody playing secondary role.

Marcin Masecki: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido

Marcin Masecki, an outstanding Polish cross-genre pianist, composed the new work inspired by famous composition of Frederic Rzewski and invited another pianist Piotr Nowicki to perform it. The he came to conclusion, that the work is a failure...

Arturas Bumšteinas: Different Trains

The album is a collection of works of  Arturas Bumšteinas inspired by Central European cultural landscape (soundscape). It includes radio play Wielka improwizacja commisioned by Bôłt Records. Wielka improwizacja is based on the monologue from the 3^rd part of the poetic drama Dziady (Forefather's Eve) by Adam Mickiewicz and the archival recording of its reading done by the Polish poet Miron Białoszewski. Most parts of this composition were recorded in and around the site of the Basilian monastery in Vilnius, which in the 19^th century was turned into a Russian Tsarist prison where both Adam Mickiewicz and a protagonist of his poetic drama were jailed.

Kåre Kolberg: Attitudes

Kåre Kolberg is a pioneer of electroacoustic music in Norway, and he was the first Norwegian composer to write a piece of computer music (in 1973).  […] Kolberg’s basic ideas for electroacoustic form were shaped in his first works made in Sweden and Poland in the early 1970s, and he used a collage technique with easily recognizable elements that communicated well with audiences. Later, he extended his technique by adding a more electronic-sounding and abstract timbral palette.

Jøran Rudi

Maja S. K. Ratkje in dialogue with Eugeniusz Rudnik

Making music is to be in constant dialogue with your own aesthetics and preferences. In inspired moments, you can get surprised by where the process leads you. And in welcoming circumstances, there are no limits or sneaking doubts that disallow you to try out any possibility. The electronic music made by Eugeniusz Rudnik unquestionably encourages such a position. Working with his music has been greatly inspiring, and the nature of his music feels strangely fitting to my own approach to electronic media.

Maja S. K. Ratkje

Helge Sten: Monochromes

Samples:  Bohdan Mazurek „Pensylvania Dream” (1-4), Tomasz Sikorski „Echoes II” (5)

POPULISTA (ONLINE) presents RODRIGO GARCÍA Golgota Picnic

The theatre piece Golgota Picnic by Rodrigo García was supposed to be performed at Malta Festival 2014. It was cancelled by the organizers due to protests and threats of possible unrest. On the day of the scheduled performance a number of readings of the text's excerpts were organised (not by the festival). This is the recording of the one in Warsaw.

Białoszewski do słuchu, vol. 4 - Sound Poems

I bought a tape recorder for four thousand. When you come to Warsaw in May or June, we could do some recording. It's a good activity. Interesting to everyone.

Miron Białoszewski, April 1965

Białoszewski do słuchu, vol. 3 - Tower Block

I bought a tape recorder for four thousand. When you come to Warsaw in May or June, we could do some recording. It's a good activity. Interesting to everyone.

Miron Białoszewski, April 1965

Białoszewski do słuchu, vol. 2 - Cabaret

I bought a tape recorder for four thousand. When you come to Warsaw in May or June, we could do some recording. It's a good activity. Interesting to everyone.

Miron Białoszewski, April 1965

Białoszewski do słuchu, vol. 1 - Theatre

I bought a tape recorder for four thousand. When you come to Warsaw in May or June, we could do some recording. It's a good activity. Interesting to everyone.

Miron Białoszewski, April 1965

Sultan Hagavik - TDNWH

Sultan Hagavik: Mikołaj Laskowski and Jacek Sotomski - portable cassette deck players, dictaphones and other sound sources

All compositions, recording and mastering by Sultan Hagavik

Małe Instrumenty - Kartacz

If I were to look at the ideas promoted by the Experimental Studio against Małe Instrumenty’s practices, I would refer to the concept of music which is – for certain reasons – “impossible”.

Andrzej Bieżan - Polygamy

In all respects, Andrzej Bieżan (1945-83) was an original and creative composer. His main means of expression were intuitive creation based on general assumptions and well balanced improvisation respecting proportions typical of traditional narrative.

Głowicka&Walentynowicz - Red Sun

Works of Kasia Głowicka commisioned by Performing Arts Fund, Netherlands

Małgorzata Walentynowicz - piano

Kasia Głowicka - computer

Zygmunt Krauze - Fête galante et pastorale

There were several 'firsts' involved in my initial encounter with Zygmunt Krauze's music: my first visit to Poland (1970), my first 'Warsaw Autumn' festival and its first concert (19 September), and the Warsaw premiere of Krauze's first Piece for Orchestra (1969). The memory has stayed with me ever since, not least because here was a work that was distinctly different from the other new Polish music that had so far filtered westwards. I was familiar with some Lutosławski, Penderecki and Górecki, but what struck me that evening was the restraint, delicacy and individuality of Krauze's music. It stood out for being quiet, reflective and very beautiful.

Arne Nordheim - Solitaire

The Polish Radio Experimental Studio, founded in 1957, was as an experimental centre and a production unit of the Polish Radio but it has been mainly known as one of the most import_ant creative centres in Europe. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Warsaw centre hosted numerous guests from abroad including almost all of the most distinguished epresentatives of the art of electro-acoustic music: Lejaren Hiller, Franco Evangelisti, François-Bernard Mâche, Vittorio Gelmetti, Roland Kayn, Christian Clozier, Tamas Ungvary, Nigel Osborne, Stephen Montague, Bengt Emil Johnson, KĂĽre Kolberg and Arne Nordheim. Nordheim often visited “the black room” on Malczewskiego street where the main production space of the Experimental Studio was located. The emotional bond with his Polish friends was as import_ant to him as music. There were many private meetings with Józef Patkowski, Witold Lutosławski and Włodzimierz Kotoński. The composer’s relations with engineers were also more than professional. After flying from Oslo to Warsaw, Nordheim went from the Okęcie airport straight to the hospitable home of the Rudnik family and “ritually” consumed his favourite Polish dish: white borsch with sausage. Already at the dinner table, the composer discussed with Rudnik their tactics of planned technological and artistic activities . Then, subsequent Nordheim’s compositions were born during long hours spent together on Malczewskiego...

Sounding the Body Electric

The album is a natural alliance of the producers working with the Polish Radio Experimental Studio's archives and the curators of the exhibition dedicated to intersections of technology and body in art of the 1960s and 1970s. The thematic "common" field was operationally called "early Eastern European sound art", although none of us really meant it literally. Undoubtedly, we were all interested in such works of art where the sound was approached from the perspective of other art disciplines. Leaving film, theatre, dance and radio art to other occasions, we mainly focused on visual arts, performance and architecture – mostly due to their conceptual connotations. We followed the two fundamental issues discussed in the 1960s: object and space.

Arturas Bumšteinas - Sleep (An Attempt at Trying)

Bartek Kalinka - Champion of the World Has No Monopoly on the Legions

Patryk Zakrocki - Martian Landscapes

I have never been to Mars, but sometimes i drop by... pictures and films we have access to give us a false impression that we already know something. My Mars is still populated with images from our childhood linked with hundreds of films and science fiction novels. i sympathize with misinterpretation of the illusion caused by old telescopes, as if the surface of Mars was covered with a network of irrigation canals being a proof of high civilization. combination of curiosity and fear stemming from this mistake resulted in a huge number of unbelievable stories and untrue images which – instead of describing Mars – are rather a reflection of our human nooks and crannies.

(Patryk Zakrocki)

Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers

Architectural Biennale sound sculpture amplifying the entire building of the Polish Pavilion turned into a flat CD? Will you say it completely misses the point? Brings the real space into a stereo system? Or is it just different? Listening to this album, you will definitely miss some of the acoustic reinforcements of the room we created to raise a sculpture following the natural acoustics of the room. They are only explained here in words, on the following pages. But this is the high time and also the best occasion to highlight other dimensions and bring them to foreground here.

(Michał Libera)

USA I – 1939 Southern Recording Trip Fieldnotes

Text excerpted from 1939 Southern Recording Trip Fieldnotes prepared by John A. Lomax and Ruby T. Lomax
Audio quotes excerpted from their recordings
Music by Michał Biela, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, DJ Lenar and Pete Simonelli

USA II – Ten Intrusions

Selection and sequence of texts in Ten Intrusions follows that of Harry Partch's 1949-1950 composition Eleven Intrusions
Texts by Ella Young (1, 4), Ella Young and Lao Tzu (5), Tsurayuki (2), Willard Motley (6), George Leite (7), Giuseppe Ungaretti (9, 10)
Music by Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, David Maranha and Pete Simonelli

USA III – Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America without a Trace

Text excerpted from Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America without a Trace edited by Susanne Bürner
Music by David Grubbs, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, David Maranha, Małgorzata Penkalla and Pete Simonelli

V/A Solitude of Sounds – in memoriam Tomasz Sikorski

The American flavour of minimalism has an "urban" soundscape that emerges from frenetic human interaction. It is the environment that informs a lifestyle and thus, informs the composer. On the other hand, the Dutch style of minimalism is what I'd call "Hippie minimalism". It is informed by culture of activism, as seen in Louis Andriessen's Workers Union and by the pragmatism within the Dutch ethic. This brings me to what the Polish style of minimalism is mostly known for as well as personal experiences and environment of its creators. It's been called "mystic minimalism" and at its core there is an inherent interest to express emotions in a grandiose way.

Zygmunt Krauze – Spatial Music

Władysław Strzemiński's unism as well as functionalism are to be found at the roots of the first sound installation in Poland. Prepared for Galeria Współczesna in Warsaw, it is a piece signed by an architect Teresa Kelm, composer Zygmunt Krauze and sculptor Henryk Morel. "Spatial-Musical Composition" is a follow up of Morel's and Krauze's explorations initiated in 1966 together with Cezary Szubartowski and Grzegorz Kowalski which resulted in an action titled "5x".

V/A PRES Scores

'PRES Scores' contains original and new realisations of five out of seven Studio's published scores. These are pieces by Andrzej Dobrowolski, Bogusław Schaeffer and Włodzimierz Kotoński 'performeed' in PRES by Eugeniusz Rudnik and Bohdan Mazurek and as Bôłt Records commissions by Lionel Marchetti, Thomas Lehn, Philip Zoubek and Wolfram, Arszyn and Piotr Kurek, Marion Wörle and Małe Instrumenty. The scores are a fascinating chapter in the Studio's history. Not only because of the insight into first attempts to write down electronic sounds, being a great material to analyze or displaying links between music and graphics. It is mainly due to the fact that even in those few published scores it is explicitly visible that their utilitarian functions were rapidly replaced with the experimental ones.

Wolfram – Atol Drone ±

The world Wolfram conjures up on Atol Drone is an oneiric and delicate one, weaved from delicate samples. Somewhere in the background you can make out murmurs of unrest from a volcano, silence of a never-ending calm interrupted by the sound of a bird gliding in the sky, sea waves rhythmically crashing against a coral reef, sounds of an impending disaster and, finally, violence and cruelty of the enraged Ocean. So intense and powerful is the sense of unrest this album seems to convey that virtually each of its pieces could work as a soundtrack to a film.

Phonos ek Mechanes C+-

The Phonos ek Mechanes trio was founded in 2007 by three composers and electro-acoustic performers from Wrocław: Cezary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich and Sławomir Kupczak. The name of the group comes from Greek and means "the sound of the machine" which reflects specific methods of artistic creation applied by the three musicians.

Sławomir Kupczak – Report

Bôłt Records i Niklas Records proudly present a new radio play by Sławomir Kupczak (an outstanding young Polish composer of electroacoustic music) to libretto by Paweł Krzaczkowski.

V/A Blanc et Rouge

Presenting yet another collection of 'absent' works is an evidence of their creators' critical approach and lack of consent to political pressure, under which they had to function. This album is only a selection of compositions belonging to this trend. Under the wing of the Warsaw Polish Radio Experimental Studio emerged dozens of hours of socially engaged music. These compositions to a various degree alluded to the current events but also pointed to the broader historical and humanistic context. Visible references to "here and now" do not lower the artistic rank of those works. What is more, they mysteriously make them more universal.

John Tilbury – For Tomasz Sikorski

The music on this album demonstrates Sikorski’s unerring feeling for harmony and register; the “minimal- ism” of these pieces was absorbed naturally, the repetitions never seem arbitrary. Above all, this is piano music, par excellence. The improvisation for prepared piano which follows is a humble tribute, elegiac in character and full of echoes and personal reminiscences of the man and his music.

(John Tilbury)

Corneliu Dan Georgescu - Et vidi Caelum Novum

'Composing as contemplation of a musical archetype' - this is the best recapitulation of what Georgescu says about his own music, pointing to Jung's archetypes of collective unconscious. What is most crucial and powerful in these works is not how originally the composer captures the musical material, plays with it and reshuffles it. One could even say that Georgescu does not compose and does not "arrange" sounds, but rather contemplates archetypical figures and turns towards basic components, pure elements.

Sultan Hagavik – 9 Symphonies

sultan hagavik is first Polish band (and probably the second one in the world) which performs music using tape decks. It was founded in July 2011 in Wroclaw, in circumstances hard to specify. The band utilizes recordings found on old cassettes, as well as their own material recorded with analogue dictaphone. Using tape decks as musical instruments allows duo members to create completely new sonic quality. In their sur-conventional compositions they refer to many musical genres; from pop to punctualism.

Ergo Phizmiz plays R.Ashley Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon

Voices by Ergo Phizmiz and Lula
Piano by Ergo Phizmiz
Guitar by Maciej Cieślak
Violin by Julia Ziętek
Laptop by Alessandro Bosetti
Turntable by DJ Lenar

Jean-Louis Costes plays Marquis de Sade Justine

Voice, melodies and adaptation by Jean-Louis Costes
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Zosia Morus on 15th of October 2011 in Królikarnia
Edited and produced by Michał Libera
Premiered at The Birth of Noise out of the Spirit of XVIII Century Music series
accompanying the exhibition Ladies with a Doggy and an Ape.

Miron Białoszewski plays Adam Mickiewicz Dziady

'Singing. Speaking. Exactly. Moreover: the kind of difference between them? Supposedly clear. But where does the border line go? Is it terminology? Is it stretching the syllables (or even sounds)? Or altering the pitch? Or rhythm? Perhaps trembling of the voice? With stretching? (...) Often we had particular speakings (calculated according to its own melody but still speakings), straightforward singing and singing-speakings, on the edge, which turned out to be pretty broad as variety of almost singings was turning out, crooning speaking, sections of monotones or the opposite - rhythmic pile-ups becoming music out of its own urge. Hence there was no point in bringing foreign, outer music, music as such - apart from acoustics of objects playing their roles or rhythm of walking (e.g., drumming buskins)'

M. Białoszewski, O tym Mickiewiczu jak go mówię, "Odra" 1967, nr 6.

Witold Szalonek – Medusa

Sensuality of the sound, discipline of the form, epic scale and theatricality of performance - Witold Szalonek's music is multidimensional and still quite unknown. Highly valued by audiences and critics, it still hasn't gained a well-deserved place in the concert life. Its significance was by no means limited to the post-war history of Polish music and its spectacular stream: sonorism. Szalonek's interests were much more universal and had far-reaching consequences for the whole European music.

Bogusław Schaeffer - Assemblage

Polish Radio Experimental Studio is the first official series of CD releases dedicated to the music produced in the legendary Studio. Established in 1957 by Józef Patkowski, it was among the first institutions of that kind in the world with only Paris, Cologne and Milano preceding the Warsaw one. Despite that, unlike their foreign colleagues who quickly became the most important figures of the XX century music, Polish composers working in the Studio are known only to a limited number of insiders.

DJ Lenar – Re: PRES

Marcin Lenarczyk in his portable studio improvises as often as composes or designs soundtracks. The studio is two amps (guitar and bass guitar), turntable, sampler, loop station. Even though the set up brings to mind decades of early concrete music, today it is hardly a tool to break in to new music territories. It is rather a tool to play (with). It is in the muscles and gestures of its users, just as much as 'Goldberg Variations' have been embodied in hands and posture of Glenn Gould.

Knittel / Sikora / Michniewski - Secret Poems

The KEW stands for a group of three composers: Krzysztof, Elżbieta and Wojciech, founded in 1973 when they were all students at the Fryderyk Chopin Higher State School of Music in Warsaw. They were a group of friends who enjoyed spending time in good (i.e. each other's) company and collectively coming up with new compositions. They weren't average students. Elżbieta Sikora had already been on probation (1968-1970) in Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris under the guidance of Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle and had performed in France several times. Wojciech Michniewski (who had graduated with honours from the Department of Composition, Conducting and Theory of Music) was giving numerous performances and was supposed to shortly obtain 'Orfeusz', the main award for the best performance of a Polish composition at the Warsaw Autumn Festival of Contemporary Music. Krzysztof Knittel was already successful in the area of popular music and he did not cease searching: he took part in courses on the Fortran programming language and attended lectures on mathematical and humanistic logics and on theories of probability. He was also a listener of a cycle of professor Tatarkiewicz's philosophical lectures.

Bernhard Schütz & Reinhold Friedl play R Schumann Dichterliebe

Frédéric Blondy & DJ Lenar play Mauricio Kagel Ludwig van

Piano by Frédéric Blondy
Turntable by DJ Lenar
Recorded by Zosia Morus at Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 19th of March 2011
Assembled, edited, mixed and mastered by DJ Lenar and Michal Libera
Produced by Michal Libera
Premiered at Hyperacusis music series, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 19th of March 2011
Cover artwork by Aleksandra Waliszewska
Layout by Piotr Bukowski

Rinus van Albeek plays Luc Ferrari Cycles des Souvenirs

Recorded by Rinus van Alebeek
Voice by Brunhild Ferrari
Recorded by Rinus van Alebeek in Montreuil,
29th of October 2010
Unmixed and unmastered
Produced by Michal Libera
Cover artwork by Aleksandra Waliszewska
Layout by Piotr Bukowski

Mimeo – Wigry

I know everybody is laughing at it and I also realize it is missing the point for many reasons but... my phantasy is that MIMEO is today's Duke Ellington Orchestra (Rafael Toral being Johnny Hodges for sure...!). Yes, of course, I know, there is no Duke here but how about everybody's having such a clear and autonomous voice - immediately recognizable sound, particular way of playing, maybe even a method?

(Michał Libera)

Zeitkratzer - Plays PRES

Instrumental versions of the pieces from Polish Radio Experimental Studio arranged by probably the most unusual ensembles of contemporary music - zeitkratzer. International virtuoso group is specialized in this kind of provocative approach to electronic music. Taking as starting point the fact that instrumental techniques are indebted in electronic music, zeitkratzer proves that what in the 60. was possible only thanks to recording studios, nowadays can be played live, on violins and pianos. This is exactly what happen on 4th of September in Sejny's White Synagogue, where the premiere of the repertoire took place. After listening to hours of compositions from the Studio, musicians have selected six of them to be reinterpreted for the concert. They represent different stages of Studio's history and were prepared for instrumental covers by zeitkratzer during its members stay in Residential Arts Centre in Wigry. Now the selected six compositions are presented as a CD album.

Bohdan Mazurek - Sentinel Hypothesis

Sentinel Hypothesis is a monograph 2xCD album by one of the most important figures of Polish Radio Experimental Studio. Bohdan Mazurek started working in the Studio in 1962 as a recording engineer but soon became its prominent composer, both of illustrative (film music) and autonomous music. His compositions are known for their solicitude for sound and extensive use of traditional instruments - not as neutral or random base for composition but rather as a material presupposing its limitations and ways of usage. The selection of compositions on the album are dated from 1967 to 1989 showing a wide spectrum of his interests from 'classical' electronic music to what would today be called field recordings. The CDs are accompanied by thorough analysis of the compositions by one of the most active researched of Studio's history, Boleslaw Blaszczyk, as well as comments of their author, Bohdan Mazurek.

V/A - PRES Revisited. Józef Patkowski In Memoriam

The album's core is the recording of the concert dedicated to Polish Radio Experimental Studio in London's Cafe Oto (CD2). Electronic pieces from the Studio were turned into instrumental structured improvisations performed by legends of improvised music, members of AMM John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost, coming back to playing violin, Phil Durrant and two Polish musicians of the younger generation - guitarist Maciej Sledziecki based in Cologne and Warsaw cellist, Mikolaj Palosz. In their solo sets, they presented their individual variations on the compositions created in the Studio. Their collaborations were framed by graphic scores based on original recording and prepared by Denis Kolokol. His attempt was to make use of the idiosyncratic instrumental language of each of the improvisers; language that owes so much to the development of electronic music. CD1 consists of original, remastered recordings of the pieces that were performed in Cafe Oto as they seem to be among the greatest productions of the Studio.

Cornelius Cardew – The Great Learning

We are proud to present the first complete release of a milestone of XX century music and a first piece to be called minimalist (by Michael Nyman). In a nearly 5-hour long recording of the piece one can hear Webern's punctualism, Reich's trance music, Ligeti's "clouds of sound" and echoes of Cage's conceptual provocations. The monumental music-theater mystery, on the one hand, evokes long lost spirit of archaic tribal rituals and, on the other, prophesies emancipated, experimental home-made music of the XXI century.

Arturas Bumšteinas - Heap of Language

Creating music out of nothing is simply impossible. It's better, then, to consciously "re-write history" rather than pretend to be some kind of demiurge [...] An interesting example is the cycle "Five Songs" which includes "Nasdaq" and "Malcowa". Each singer sent me his favorite song which ranged from pop to real folk-music. The recordings of these pieces have been then re-composed and transformed in many different ways. I used spectral analysis to come up with harmony material for the instrumental ensemble. I re-organized the original vocal parts using graphic and number notation; I also made use of the so called "audio scores", which are model recordings, imitated later by the performing musicians [...]

(Arturas Bumšteinas)

Slawomir Kupczak - Novella

The CD album entitled Novella consists of two electro-acoustic, not-experimental pieces composed in 2002 and 2004, and an almost 50-minute long composition from 2007-2009. This is what I noted down in a digital form; it's time frozen, time which has acquired a certain shape which, however, is by no means an emotional rendering of those gone days, hours, and minutes.

Sonus Akrobata Mandragora

On the CD "Mandragora" an improvisation by duet Sonus Akrobata refers to clasics of free improvisation of the 1970s, ethnic music from around the world, as well as experimental post-rock musicians like Fred Frith or Thurston Moore.