ICTUS in Warsaw: Andrea Centazzo i goście Ksawery Wójciński & Olgierd Dokalski / Marta Grzywacz
We invite you to an evening of improvised music. We don’t know how the Lab will sound on a May night… but we know it is worth being here to experience these sounds. For the first time in Poland we will host Andrea Centazzo!
Andrea Centazzo is an outstanding musician, percussionist, composer and improviser. Founder of the legendary ICTUS label, he has been present on the international scene for five decades and will be performing in Poland for the first time.
He will be joined, in accordance with his own wish, by two Polish musicians: double bass player Ksawery Wójciński and trumpeter Olgierd Dokalski. The concert ahead promises to be an exceptional event — not only because it will be the first encounter between these artists, but above all because it promises to be an act of creation in situ nascendi, unrepeatable, one of a kind, and perhaps unlike anything we could have heard before.
The evening will open with an improvised concert by Marta Grzywacz — vocalist and improviser of Hashtag Ensemble.
Program:
Marta Grzywacz
break
Andrea Centazzo and guests: Ksawery Wójcicki and Olgierd Dokalski
Production:
Artistic concept and text: Maciej Karłowski Production: Lilianna KrychVisual identity: Aleksandra ŒdakSound engineering: Kosma Standera Co-organization: Fundacja Słuchaj! and FSRecords Publishing House.
The Hashtag Lab Contemporary Music Space is co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw. The media patron of the Hashtag Lab Contemporary Music Space is Dwójka Polskie Radio and POLMIC.PL.
Find out more about the artists:
Andrea Centazzo
A legend of the improvised music scene. Composer, percussionist and multimedia artist. For more than five decades he has been a bold explorer of contemporary art. In the early 1970s he introduced a new concept of drumming, migrating from Free Jazz to a new form of improvised music, defining himself while simultaneously searching for his own new compositional methods. In the late 1970s Centazzo was one of the founders of the New York Downtown Music Scene, collaborating with John Zorn, Tom Corra, Eugene Chadbourne, Toshinori Kondo and others, as documented on many albums. In 1976 he founded ICTUS Records, one of the first musician-run labels, recording with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Pierre Favre, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Alvin Curran, Albert Mangelsdorff, Don Cherry, Marylin Crispell, Elliott Sharp and many others. He left the improvised music scene in 1986, beginning a career as a video creator and shortly thereafter moving to Los Angeles, California, devoting himself to composition and film direction. Centazzo is the author of three operas, two symphonies and nearly five hundred compositions for ensembles of all kinds, as well as many award-winning video films. The Library of the University of Bologna at DAMS recently dedicated to the composer the Fondo Andrea Centazzo, where all his works are collected and made available to students and scholars. In November 2017, at the city hall in Udine, Italy, he was awarded the Seal of the City. The mayor, Alberto Felice De Toni, accompanied by the councillor for culture and the councillor for tourism, paid tribute to him as an artist active throughout the world, especially in the USA, who through important research in the fields of music and art has brought renown to his home city of Udine and made an exceptional contribution to the dissemination of Italian and Friulian culture beyond the country’s borders.
Olgierd Dokalski
Trumpeter, composer with a broad interest in folk culture, director and screenwriter. A graduate of the Military University of Technology and of the Script and Studio Prób courses at the Wajda School. By training a cyberneticist, and a would-be cultural anthropologist. Founder and leader of the post-rock, folk and jazz avant-garde quintet Daktari. In 2012, commissioned by the Nowa Muzyka Żydowska festival, he brought into existence the Polish-Israeli-Belgian quartet nor cold, with which he interpreted Sephardic songs from the Balkans from the early 20th century. He currently leads the formation kIRk. Author of the solo album “Mirza Tarak,” in which, through a concept album format, he gives expression to his Tatar cultural-genealogical interests. Finalist in the Script Pro competition and award recipient in the Script Wars competition for the screenplay Donmeh. The emotional trumpet playing of Olgierd Dokalski has been praised in the highest terms by Michael Gira — leader of the cult rock group Swans, pioneer of future-jazz trumpet Nils Petter Molvaer, and the godmother of new sounds (who hosted a show on BBC Radio 1 for many years) Mary Anne Hobbs.
Ksawery WójcińskiDouble bass player, composer, vocalist.
A graduate of the Music Academy in Bydgoszcz.
For over a decade he has ranked among the most important artists of his generation. He is a recognized figure on the improvised music scene and moves comfortably across many musical worlds, collaborating with the most outstanding musicians of the improvised scene.
He can be heard on over thirty albums both as a leader and as a sideman. Among the most important are albums recorded with the legendary ensemble Hera, the Charles Gayle trio (Christ Everlasting), Szpilman together with Uri Caine, and the solo album The Soul, as well as Delusions and With all due respect recorded with his brothers Szymon (piano), Maurycy (trumpet) and drummer Krzysztof Szmańda.
He increasingly draws on voice in his work, which has become an excellent complement to the sound of the double bass. He is part of Maniucha Bikont’s ensembles and of the outstanding folk-rooted formation TULEJE.
He collaborates with many outstanding artists, including Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Satoko Fuji, Alan Bern, Franz Hautzinger, Amir ElSaffar.
Marta Grzywacz
Varsovian, improviser, teacher.
A graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music. As a pianist she serves as a dance accompanist. As a teacher she supports the musical development of students using the rich resources of the Émile Jaques-Dalcroze method.
As a member of Hashtag Ensemble she performs vocal parts in newly created works.
In 2023 at Hashtag Lab she initiated f.i.m.m., a series of concerts by improvising duos.
As an improviser she has collaborated with, among others, Sebastian Mac and Paulina Owczarek (album What is that? released by Scatter Archive) and Anna Gadt, Gosia Zagajewska and Natalia Kordiak (album Voice Act released by Fundacja Słuchaj!).
