Adam Bałdych & Leszek Możdżer
Biography Adam Bałdych & Leszek Możdżer
Adam Bałdych
Violinist and composer. Born 18.05.1986 in Gorzow Wielkopolski, based in Warsaw. A graduate of the Academy of Music in Katowice, tutored by Henryk Gembalski. Since 2012 he has been associated with ACT music publisher seated in Munich.
Dubbed “a violin prodigy”, he started his career at the age of 14. He was promptly recognised as an innovator combining the achievements of classical music and the contemporary language of the violin with an improviser’s talent. In a short time, he created his own style, which became an inspiration for a new generation of improvising violinists.
He has presented his music at the most important jazz festivals and in prestigious concert halls, in countries such as: Poland, Germany, South Korea, China, Japan, the United States, Canada, Austria, Iceland, Portugal, Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, Spain, and Indonesia. He has performed and recorded with extraordinary artists such as: Yaron Herman, Agata Zubel, Cezary Duchnowski, Helge Lien, Aaron Parks, Lars Danielsson, Nils Landgren, Iiro Rantala, Marius Neset, Jacob Karlzon, Joachim Kuhn, and Billy Cobham. He has received numerous prizes and awards, such as: The Grand Prix and the individual award of the Jazz nad Odrą festival (2006), ECHO Jazz - a German music industry award (2013), the Polish gold Cross of Merit (2016) and the Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture (2016). In 2020, together with the Adam Bałdych Quartet, he became a finalist of the prestigious BMW Welt Jazz 2020 award, with results to be announced in January 2021.
Adam Bałdych has been more and more active as a classical composer, writing pieces commissioned by renowned orchestras. In 2015 he composed the Mozaika-Impresje piece commissioned by the Szczecin Baltic Neopolis Orchestra, and in 2016 he wrote Antiphona to the texts found in the Qumran caves for the Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej. In 2019 he prepared the Early Birds Symphony commissioned by the AUKSO orchestra for the Auksodrone festival, and he is about to realise further commissions for AUKSO. In 2021 Adam Bałdych’s new composition, commissioned by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, will be premiered in Stuttgart.
Adam Bałdych is appreciated for his creativity in the field of jazz and contemporary music performance, blending the two domains in a creative manner, and a great expressivity of his musical interpretations. He has participated in recording nearly 20 albums. The latest, released in 2021 - Poetry - is the seventh album he wrote and performed in published by ACT. This album is Bałdych’s collaboration with the extraordinary Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, the album appeared in the ranking of the most important publications of the year by the American portal Bandcamp and the British JazzWise magazine.
Leszek Możdżer
An outstanding pianist, composer and producer, Leszek Możdżer is widely considered to be Polish Jazz’s greatest revelation of the last decade. Born in 1971, he has been playing the piano since the age of five. He completed every stage of formal education until graduating in 1996 from the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. He became interested in jazz relatively late – in his last grade – when he was 18. He was introduced to jazz in the band of Emil Kowalski, a clarinet player, but his proper start took place at his first rehearsal with a band called Miłość (Love) back in 1991. One year later he received an individual award at the International Jazz Competition Jazz Juniors ’92 held in Cracow. He was also a member of the Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet. In the poll organized among Jazz Forum readers Możdżer was chosen as the Most Promising Musician of the year 1993 and 1994, and the Best Jazz Pianist – in each consecutive year since 1994. Leszek was also many times honored as The Musician of the Year.
On many occasions Leszek Możdżer recorded music with Zbigniew Preisner (Requiem for my friend, 10 easy pieces for piano). He also works on a regular basis with Jan Kaczmarek, Polish composer living in LA, while recording music scores (for 20th Century Fox and Miramax). He has been invited to perform jointly with the most gifted and renowned Polish jazz musicians, such as: Tomasz Stańko, Janusz Muniak, Michał Urbaniak, Anna Maria Jopek, Adam Pierończyk and Piotr Wojtasik.
Możdżer has also performed and recorded with many internationally acclaimed musicians, including David Friesen, Pat Metheny, Arthur Blythe, Buster Williams, Billy Harper, Joe Lovano, Archi Shepp, David Liebman, Charles Fox, Lester Bowie, David Gilmour, Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Steve Swallow, Eddie Daniels and Tan Dun.
Since 2011 Leszek Możdżer has been the Artistic director of the music festival, Enter Music Festival, held annually in Poznań, on the Lake Strzeszyńskim shoreline.
Leszek Możdżer has recorded over 100 albums, many of them released under his name
