25.08 - Thursday - Voicingers Eastern Jazz
Mariia Guraievska Quartet
Mariia Guraievska was born in Asia, between the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean and Sea of Okhotsk basin, amidst gold mines, in the small Yakutsk town of Ust-Nera Oymyakon. Temperatures in this Siberian mining settlement drop below -70 degrees Celsius in January, making it roughly equivalent to the North Pole in terms of cold.
She was raised in Ukraine, where she completed music school and studied journalism. For years as a child, she was involved with the folk vocal group “Ladowyci”, whose energetic activity ensured them awards in competitions and appearances at Ukranian and Polish folk music festivals. “Ladowyci” based their repertoire on meticulous and long-maintained documentation of the traditional songs of Ukraine's Podolia region.
This authentic musical material, gathered 'with her own hands' during her time working with the group, in the course of several-day summer excursions into little-known and not easily accessible regions of Ukraine, constitutes the basis of the vocalist's repertoire at present, and she has enhanced it with her own, original, jazz-inspired arrangements.
In its repertoire, the group Mariia Guraievska Ethno Jazz Projekt melds the traditions of folk with the improvisational element of jazz and intense, guitar-based sound of rock. Though its lineup consists of instrumentalists from the younger generation of Poland's jazz scene, who are enjoying progressively more recognition, the group unquestionably owes its originality to this mystique-filled and energetic Ukrainian vocalist. Mariia Guraievska has drawn from the language of jazz in a wholly unique way to weave its elements into the traditional music of greater Ukraine – a country whose people have for centuries existed at the juncture of Muslim-Orthodox Eastern and Catholic-Protestant Western cultures.
www.guraievska.com/en
26.08 - Friday - Voicingers meets Silesia
Adam Oleś & Silesian Voices
Voicingers is an opportunity to present the thesis that Silesian speech („godka”) can be combined with jazz.
The main idea of the project is to produce a collage of Silesian speech, accoustic sound and totally unleashed enthusiasm. It was not only deep fascination with ethno music but also the innermost need to break some musical stereotypes that provoked this idea to appear. The so-called ethnofeeling makes the musicians attempt to merge simple Silesian songs with the special sound they already recognize as their own, even though it comes from far away.
In the concert you will hear Silesian singers of Radostowianki, a folk choir that has existed for thirty years in Radostowice, Suszec. The community is proud of the group which is well known to folk festival audiences, even out of Silesia. Since its first days the group has been directed by Jadwiga Masny, who is always in search of beauty and nobility in the language and melody of Silesian songs.
Dominika Kontny, a cellist, student at Academy of Music in Katowice, will sing for us this time. As she once said there are staves in her head, crawling with notes, some of which are inspired by the Silesian spirit, so omnipresent in her life. The singers will be accompanied by musicians of jazz background, who gave in to the charm of this extraordinary project.
Adam Oleś - a cellist, geologist and a man of Żory- is responsible for the entire enterprise. He has been happy to work with Grażyna Auguścik, Grzegorz Karnas, Jorgos Skolias, Cello Quartet Kordo and many other musicians.