FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2023, 8:00 pm

7TH JAZZTOPAD FESTIVAL NYC PRESENTS:

1 set: Amir ElSaffar, Ole Mathisen, Tomas Fujiwara

2 set: Amir ElSaffar, Ole Mathisen, Tomas Fujiwara, Ksawery Wójciński, PK and KP

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
“The Jazztopad Festival, a leading event of its kind in Poland...”
– NATE CHINEN, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“...Jazztopad stands as an internationally renowned festival with a clearly defined ethos, one that combines a strong respect for the traditions and roots of the music with a progressive vision that provides a platform for the contemporary and innovative.”  – IAN PATTERSON, ALLABOUTJAZZ.COM

Jazztopad Festival, the leading event of its kind in Poland, has organised its satellite editions all over the world (Japan, Turkey, South Korea) in collaboration with such partners as Jarasum International Jazz Festival, Tokyo Jazz Festival, Akbank Jazz Festival, TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. For 20 years, the festival has been commissioning music from some of the most important American artists including Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, Jason Moran, William Parker, Vijay Iyer and Terence Blanchard. The international creative partnerships of Jazztopad include such prestigious organizations as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Kennedy Center, London Jazz Festival and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Live recordings from the festival have been released on ECM and Blue Note Records.

Poland’s premier jazz festival celebrating its seventh year of presenting Polish jazz and improvised music in New York City with cutting edge performances by Polish and American artists.

Amir ElSaffar is a composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist, a recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a 2018 US Artist Fellow. His is conversant in the language of contemporary jazz but has also created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is a purveyor of the centuries-old, now endangered Iraqi maqam tradition, in which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur player. He has received commissions to compose for large and small jazz ensembles, traditional Middle Eastern ensembles, chamber orchestras, string quartets, and contemporary music ensembles, as well as dance troupes.

Ole Mathisen is a saxophonist, composer and teacher, with a strong background in jazz. He earned a Master's Degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied arranging with Maria Schneider, composition with Ed Green, and saxophone with Bob Mintzer, and he holds a Bachelor's Degree from Berklee College of Music. Ole is the Director of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program at Columbia University, where he also has been teaching saxophone and directing ensembles since 2005.

Tomas Fujiwara is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer. Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming” (Troy Collins, Point of Departure), Tomas is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation, with his bands Triple Double (with Gerald Cleaver, Mary Halvorson, Brandon Seabrook, Ralph Alessi, and Taylor Ho Bynum), Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up (with Jonathan Finlayson, Brian Settles, Halvorson, and Michael Formanek) and The Tomas Fujiwara Trio (with Alessi and Seabrook); his collaborative duo with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum; the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Halvorson and Formanek); and a diversity of creative sideman work with forward thinking peers like Tomeka Reid and Matana Roberts. In The New York Times, Nate Chinen writes, “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint...A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.”

Ksawery Wójciński is a versatile double bassist and composer with great sensitivity to sound. His interests range from early music to the most sophisticated improvised contemporary music. He has collaborated with Charles Gayle, Mikołaj Trzaska, Satoko Fuji, Nicole Mitchell, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson and many more, and is the cofounder of such formations as the legendary Emergency and Hera. He is also known for his vocal experiments, which recall the spirit of such artists as Tom Waits and Frank Zappa.

Sextet, LAWAAI, Wojtczak / Piotrowicz, hałvva, Il Mare. Graduated with honours from the composition class of Professor Leszek Kułakowski at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk and from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. He is currently studying Soloist Program at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Aarhus. Nominated for the Fryderyk 2019 and Fryderyk 2017 awards for his own albums Product Placement and Popular Music together with Kamil Piotrowicz Sextet. He received a number of cultural awards, including the West Pomeranian Cultural Award 'Pro Arte' and 'Young Creator of Culture' of the City of Gdansk. Kamil performed all over Europe or in Africa and his approach to the piano is characterised by meticulous technique, virtuosity and immersive sensibility.