September 18, 2017
At just thirty seven years of age it's hard to believe that Piotr Turkiewicz has been pulling the strings of Jazztopad for almost a decade already. The festival, staged each November in the Polish city of Wroclaw, was already a few years old when Turkiewicz became Artistic Director in 2008, but under the canny stewardship of Turkiewicz and General Director Andrzej Kosendiak, Jazztopad has been transformed, in both style and substance, to become one of Europe's more progressively minded jazz festivals, though one with a strong sense of the music's historical roots.
Alongside cutting edge Polish, Japanese, Korean and Turkish jazz/improvised music, the Jazztopad program has embraced American legends of the genre such as Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Braxton, to name but a handful.
Almost immediately upon being appointed Artistic Director, Turkiewicz set about radically altering the Jazztopad's artistic vision.
With so many jazz festival line-ups and formats alike, Turkiewicz has made Jazztopad stand out for the original music that he commissions. Of course, Jazztopad is not the only jazz festival that commissions new work from musicians, but how many festivals can provide the musician in question with the use of a philharmonic orchestra, a chamber ensemble or a choir?
When Turkiewicz took over the Jazztopad reins in 2008 he had clear ideas what direction he wanted the festival to take: "I thought it would be great to have new pieces in the festival to add an element of celebration. Program-wise it should be special. You come to Jazztopad and you can only hear the music here. Hopefully the music will go on to have its own life, but Jazztopad is the place where you can experience something that you have not experienced before."
Jazztopad audiences have experienced new music by the likes of Erik Friedlander, Nate Wooley, Wadada Leo Smith, Jason Moran, Charles Lloyd, William Parker, Uri Caine, Anders Jormin, John Surman and Wayne Shorter. It's no small feat on Turkiewicz's part to have succeeded in persuading these jazz luminaries to engage with such a progressive idea—that's to say the fusing of jazz/avant- garde music with classical aesthetics—but it's the result of much groundwork, often over several years. "It's a matter of long conversations, and talking about what already happened in the festival so as not to repeat the same things," explains Turkiewicz. "It's very much a discussion about the forces and the instruments. It's great fun."
read more: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/piotr-turkiewicz-putting-wroclaw-on-the-jazz-map-maciej-obara-by-ian-patterson.php
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