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Maciej Stasiowski

A jazzophile, although open to all sort of cross-pollinations with rock, ambient, new classical.

About Me

So, jazz hasn't been an obvious choice for me, growing in a household committed to Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, and Marillion. Being a teenager when the New Rock Revolution became "a thing" didn't make it easy either, unless I wanted to risk estrangement from friends and classmates. Also, jazz records aren't necessarily affordable, which might be the reason so many people below twenty turn to streaming Taylor Swift instead of putting John Zorn on and turning the volume up to 11 (just a guess, but I challenge popular music researchers to prove me wrong). While you can detect jazzier bits in early Floyd noodlings and Edgar Froese's meandering keyboard passages (not to mention 1970s' King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra records), I like to think that it was the David Sylvian/Jon Hassell/David Torn axis that defined my preferences, progressively building upon them and expanding into adjacent areas and previous epochs - with autobiographies and books on jazz history becoming particularly useful in that regard. Today, most rock acts sound too predictable, their performances laser cut and timed like business pitches. Jazz, in comparison, feels like a vast, airy concourse where appointments can instantly turn into chance encounters, while planes somehow still arrive on time. Explain to me, how is that possible, and I'll find myself another genre. Until then...

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My Jazz Story

I used to be a devoted rock fan. After a while - which spanned two decades, nonetheless - I grew tired of rigid, repetitive structures. Jazz came to the rescue. It is impossible to pinpoint an exact moment, because there have always been jazz-influenced or crossover records in my sonosphere. It might have been Jan Garbarek, Miles, or Coltrane. More importantly, it worked as a stimulus to explore more. I cannot remember the first jazz purchased for my own money, although there have been frequent trips around local record stores looking up the titles and cursing the price tags (I always sensed conspiracy behind keeping jazz records twice as pricey as bland pop). The last one I bought, though, is a trophy of a decade-long treasure hunt - Miles Davis' Complete On the Corner Sessions, somehow still shrink-wrapped when the auctioned boxset arrived to my address. An advice? Read Ted Gioia. Don't let Wynton Marsalis' authoritative remarks drive you away from the unencumbered pleasure of free jazz. Follow the labels (ECM, Hubro, Gondawana Records, Impulse!) and don't trust labelling,

My House Concert Story

Several years ago, I went to see Nils Petter Molvaer at PalmJazz in Gliwice. I remember being seated in the first row, right behind Erland Dahlen's kit. Captivating is an expression that does not give justice to the immersive performance I became part of the moment Molvaer appeared on stage. Dreamy and buoyant, his intricate style of Northern jazz seem to bring together Jan Garbarek and Jon Hassell. And what an incredible contrast with an event from further back, when Peter Brotzmann blew away the audience at a Wrocław venue, creating a dense cloud of interlocking melodies and noises for over an hour. While definitely bipolar, these different experiences came to define the ends of jazz territory I have explored ever since.