Kasia Pietrzko - NOSPR

She is a pianist, composer, arranger, and a graduate of the Academy of Music in Kraków, where she was granted the title of Doctor of Musical Arts.

Following a striking debut with her trio, she quickly emerged not only as one of the leading young artists on the Polish phonographic market, but also attracted considerable attention across Europe. In 2018, she performed in Tomasz Stańko’s quartet at Alchemia club in Kraków. This event was intended to inaugurate the European concert tour of Stańko’s new quartet, a tour that was cut short by his unexpected death.

With the success of the Kasia Pietrzko Trio’s first album, Forthright Stories (2017) – which brought her the “Mateusz” Award of Trójka, the Grand Prix Jazz Melomani, and a Fryderyk nomination – Kasia found herself invited to prestigious music venues, festivals, and showcases across the world. She has since performed in the NDR studio in Hamburg, at the 12 Points Jazz Festival, the Jazz Forum Showcase, Jazz au Chellah in Morocco, and the Brno Jazz Festival.

In the pandemic-stricken year of 2020, Kasia’s trio brought out its second original album, Ephemeral Pleasures. It bears witness to the trio's consistency of style and the development of their own musical language. Here, the band’s collaborative spirit and strong energy merge with an elegant mixture of harmonic imagination, lyricism, and unfettered creativity. In May 2021, the Kasia Pietrzko Trio became the only Polish ensemble to represent the country at the international Jazzahead fair in Bremen.

When invited by the Chopin and His Europe Festival, Kasia Pietrzko joined forces with saxophonist Maciej Kądziela to create jazz interpretations of poems by Cyprian Kamil Norwid, recited by Andrzej Chyra. The project premiered in August 2021 at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw. It later was turned into a studio album, Norwid, released in September 2022. A few months earlier, in November 2021 at Jazzowa Jesień in Bielsko-Biała, Kasia Pietrzko brought a long-nurtured dream to the stage: her original concert titled "Anxious Beauty", performed by her trio alongside a jazz quintet and mixed choir.

On 28 April 2023, Warner Music released the latest album by the Kasia Pietrzko Trio, Fragile Ego, as part of the Polish Jazz series. The project is remarkable for many reasons, yet one detail draws particular attention: Kasia Pietrzko is the first female pianist, composer, and leader ever to appear in this long-standing Polish jazz series, which has been published for 58 years.

Stylistically, with its pursuit of fleeting sonic images and its sensitivity to colour, the album draws upon Impressionism. It also contains traces of early twentieth-century contemporary music, revealed in the use of both minimalist and densely woven harmonic textures. The compositions have an unmistakably expressive character: in the improvisations and main themes, strong emotions come through, expressed through an intriguing musical nervousness in the sonorities and melodic lines.