AUKSO x Maciej Obara & Dominik Wania - NOSPR

Maciej Obara

Sax player and jazz composer, born in Jelenia Góra; leader of a Polish-Norwegian quartet. Since his study years at the Academy of Music in Katowice, he has consistently developed his own style, garnering favourable reviews. He collaborated with trumpeter Tomasz Stańko on the latter’s Tomasz Stańko Special Project and the New Balladyna Quartet. Later he gained experience as a jazzman in the United States, where he recorded and performed live with representatives of the New York jazz scene. His original musical language is becoming more and more recognisable. He has appeared at major European jazz festivals and released nine CDs; the last of which, Unloved (ECM 2017), is at the same time the first studio album by the Maciej Obara Quartet. After Tomasz Stańko and Marcin Wasilewski, he is the third Pole to have released an album under that legendary Munich-based label. In 2018 he won the Fryderyk Awards as 'Jazz Musician of the Year' and for the 'Jazz Album of the Year' (Unloved).

Dominik Wania

Jazz pianist and teacher, greatly sought-after as a session musician. He studied at Academy of Music in Cracow and New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He has performed with leading Polish and foreign jazz musicians, including Tomasz Stańko and Marcus Miller. He plays the piano in Maciej Obara Quartet, with which he recorded Unloved (2017) and Three Crowns (2019), both for ECM. He also successfully performs film music, and collaborates with Zbigniew Preisner, who wrote nine pieces for solo piano specially for him (released on CD Twilight, 2019). His Fryderyk-winning original project Ravel (2013), an important item in his vast discography, is one of the few settings of that French composer’s music for a jazz trio. 2020 saw the release by ECM of his most recent album Lonely Shadows (also awarded with Fryderyk), history’s first solo CD by a Polish musician to have been appeared under this prestigious label. Dominik Wania teaches at the Academy of Music in Cracow and Academy of Music in Katowice as well as the Cracow School of Jazz and Contemporary Music.

Duration of the concert: approx. 80 minutes