Jazz Juniors 2025

Jazz Juniors
Cricoteka
Krákow, Poland
October 2-4, 2025

What is happening with today's youth? The annual Jazz Juniors competition (and accompanying festival) assembled its usual eager participants, vying for cash and concerts in prizes. For this 49th edition, six acts appeared at the very suitable Cricoteka riverside venue, allotted very brief spans to reveal their talents, for maybe 20 minutes and two or three numbers (this being jazz). The entrants are selected in blindfolded fashion, regardless of membership or origin, although most of the contestants did seem to have Polish postmarks on their audio packages.

Here is a warning, dear reader. The 2025 contingent played well, taught for proficiency, but this year's crop was low on the qualities of innovation and individuality, not seeking rebellion, not mussing the hair, not really featuring players of an extroverted, confrontational bent. This is what's happened to the new youth. Virtually no performer prompted active dislike, but also, none of them threw out bold gestures of expressive power, of needing to shock, impress, grapple or gut the audience. Even their chosen names lacked creativity. This might have made it difficult to vote, for the judges and jury members, headed up by new-ish artistic director Nils Petter Molvaer. 

Sedno came across from Wrocław, formed in 2022 with a line-up of tenor saxophone, keyboards, bass and drums. They adopted the popular Los Angeles twitch-style of avant lounge-funking, but with a hint of London stomp'n'honk. These are the devil-horned influences that have lately inspired so many following bands. Sedno cruised through a slow phase, then upped to a trot, bizarrely finding shards of jazz from the '20s and '30s, but electronicised into a drum'n'bass existence.

Public Lunch had a longer journey, down from Gdańsk, this new crew gathered around the recent compositions of pianist Wojciech Wojda, who was joined by saxophone, guitar, bass and drums. Szymon Kowalik played tenor and soprano horns, with the musical themes possessing a shadowing togetherness. Donny McCaslin has probably been a guiding influence. Pawel Kasprzewski's guitar was mellow and reverberant, and as Public Lunch only played a pair of medium-length pieces, there was the feeling that this was a too-short set.

Together since 2023, JuMa is led by Maksymilian Wilk, a soprano and tenor saxophonist from Gdynia. Again, this seems to be a band (piano, bass, drums) that's looking back to older forms, pre-funk and fusion, coming from '40s blues and swing. Their spaced-out freeness suggested a compatibility with the ECM label's sonic field, with interactions aplenty between the instrumentalists. Wilk's warm and feathered tenor tone was draped in a good amount of reverb, his soprano more bristling. Placid, luminous pools were navigated.

MJG Noisecript (yeah, I mean, where do they grab these names from?) turned out to favour an abundance of irritating vocal samples, spread across their standard electro- fusion jazz grooves, sounding sort of dated, not so fresh from the 1990s. Right near the end (of this admittedly brief set), these late-climaxing Poles introduced a harmonised effects guitar riff matched with a shadowing piano figure.

Already familiar from the 2025 edition of Jazzfest Budapest, the Symbiosis 5 were one of only two non-Polish entrants, these Hungarians operated at quite a high professional level, opening with an outstanding acoustic bass solo on "Step One." Their combination of themes transpired within what sounded like individual numbers, as if adopting a medley approach. A strong vamp was set up, with a fine developmental guitar solo. Symbiosis 5 garnered the competition's third place in prize-giving.

Birds Of Unknown brought their smooth jazz songs all the way from Slovenia, with singer Patricija Škof's's presumed operatic training lurking primly, not so far in the shadows. Guitar and saxophone completed the spacious palette. It was a challenge to swallow Birds Of Unknown's regurgitated gobbets, being the most blandly mainstream of the competition entries. This was the 1st Prize grabber, inexplicably.

As the first day's competition concluded, the next festival phase promised a pair of double-bill evenings, with contrasting acts presented, split between native Polish players and visiting Norwegians. Yes, the far northern lands are now providing an exciting input for the programme, clearly under the influence of Molvær's homeland, as he successfully negotiates his second year in this prime position.

The second night opened with one of Poland's finest pianists, who has rapidly moved from startling newcomer to established presence. The Kasia Pietrzko Trio also features Andrzej Święs (bass) and Piotr Budniak (drums), formulating a steady show of solidarity over the years, refining their rapport into a highly developed triologue. Pietrzko studied here in Kraków, and it's amazingly almost a decade since her evolution manifested itself. Your scribe only (subjectively) discovered her in 2021, at the Szczecin Jazz festival, playing with altoman Logan Richardson, but those years have zoomed by, and the trio has steadily produced three albums.

Pietrzko commands the keys with grand flowings of phrases, firmly embellishing, as she pushes her partners into delineated responses. She's inside the piano, as tiny ratchet drumming coalesces into a groove, measured as it grows a greater viciousness, with clipped and sharp sounds across an angular melodic hammering of keys. Increased space for bass and drums embellishment is created, but Pietrzko is still working right up  to the high end with her articulate flow. The three have become a free-thinking unit of composite individualist stomp, as Budniak combines his mallet and towel, making rhythms regimented for an imaginary dancefloor. They are hard-driving on The Bad Plus level. When the leader walks to the stage perimeter we sense that the coming drum solo is going to be a durational triumph. Budniak rolls and tumbles with an intensified aggression, but subsequently makes way for a sensitive dialogue between the piano and bass, for maximum contrast. The trio has embarked on a highly involved journey. Flayed cymbals, agile mallets and tiny bell-clumps lead toward a conclusion, and Pietrzko is turning out to be the maestra of sustained tune-endings. Budniak whipped his towel off his snare, seconds before the set finished.

The Norwegian trio of Nothing Personal (Solveig Wang, Dorothea Økland, Thea Emilie Wang) performed behind a complete frontal stage covering of gauze, acting as a projection capturer, the artists remaining visible, but fore-lit by flickering images, not relegated to the usual rear-stage conventional screen process. This didn't slice off their communication with the audience, as they were still visible, and adopting a playfully relaxed instrument-swapping liveliness to their show. Curiously, their singing and their songs were quite accessibly poppish, in the Scandinavian manner, but the heavily populated electronic (and treated clarinet) undergrowth tendrilled up from a dark place of sonic adventurousness, glitched, arhythmic and spurting. This formed an attractive blend of approaches.

On the festival's third evening there was another Polish-Norwegian double bill. A twosome of trumpeter Piotr Damasiewicz (prolific, primordial and multi— dimensional) and pianist Dominik Wania (ECM regular, and bright star of Polish jazz) bloomed out from their acoustic instrument core, subtly striating with electronic effects, enlarging into a virtually cavernous chamber. This restraint worked well as a herald for the second half's full-on solo drum display, courtesy of Erland Dahlen, an omnipresent Norwegian drummer, percussionist and bell-ringer. He's superbly suited to solo creation, adding looped electronic undertows, shaping melodies on small marimbas, and moving increasingly fast and powerfully as he constructs the logical uprising of a continuous comprovisation, extended in its movements, from spanging subtlety to bell-tolling bombast, mostly rhythmic, but sometimes abstract. His set might have lasted just a touch too long, perhaps by 15 minutes, but it was largely perfectly presented and judged, exciting throughout.

In what is becoming a Jazz Juniors tradition, your scribe headed on for some late night action at the Muniaka Jazz Club, just off Kraków's central square. They awarded their annual JJ prize (via the esteemed festival partner brewery Trzech Kumpli) to the Sedno combo. This club must surely be amongst the top joints vying for the most night owl-ed status around the globe, as even with your scribe descending its basement stairs to its arched cellar interior well after 10pm, the joint was still cooking. Chilly outside, but toasty once down those stone steps. Following the second evening's performances at Cricoteka, he still managed to catch most of the two club sets which were running until around 1am. Muniaka customarily presents three sets each night, not beginning these until 9.30pm.

The Dominik Żydzik Quartet were holding court, led by this local guitarist, alongside alto saxophone, bass and drums. A fruity rolling ensued, with the leader's warm sound and the alto balanced between alkaline and acid in an easy groovin' ramble. The saxophonist Szymon Ziółkowski wound his solos interestingly, leading to a fully rounded bass spotlight, prominently essayed. There was a young crowd in place close to The Witching Hour, many of whom turned out to be familiar followers of this quartet. There was a good contrast between the auras of alto and guitar, the latter opalescent and choppy, the former making an angular ballad navigation, becoming roused, and getting into some swift ornithology, as the Okocim Mistrzowski porter beer took its late nite bite. Ziólkowski made his alto honk like a tenor, preparing for the third set, where some guests appeared on piano and vocals. There was a good reading of "It Could Happen To You" and "You, The Night And The Music," the set getting progressively more into classic standards.

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