8th Jazztopad Festival NYC presents:
Amalia Umeda – violin; Marta Sanchez- piano; Michael Bates- bass; Lesley Mok - drums
8pm; $20; Tickets do not guarantee a seat. Half of capacity is standing.
The paradigm-shifting Polish festival Jazztopad makes its annual return to New York City this summer, with a series of genre-blurring events in venues around the city between June 13-16. Since signing on as artistic director of the annual gathering in Wroclaw, Poland in 2008, Piotr Turkiewicz has steadily reshaped the event, transforming it from a landing spot for touring artists and reimagining it as a creative hothouse built on long-term relationships, style-crossing collaborations, and community involvement. The New York program includes the world premiere of a new Kris Davis work featuring her own piano playing and the acclaimed Polish string ensemble Lutosławski Quartet (this event will be live-streamed from Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center), as well as intimate improv sessions built around the young Polish violinist Amalia Umeda (including with Spanish-American pianist Marta Sánchez, and American bassists Michael Bates and Stephan Crump as well as drummer Lesley Mok, recent winner of the Deutscher Jazzpreis for Best International Debut Album), all reflecting a holistic embrace of creative music unencumbered by arbitrary genre boundaries. The program will also feature the North American premiere of “The Crow” by the Australian ensemble Hand to Earth along with performances by bassist Michael Bates, working with his group Acrobat and Lutosławski Quartet, complementing his incisive arrangements of music by the composer Witold Lutosławski with brand new adaptations of music by Karol Szymanowski. As usual, the US edition of Jazztopad has been organized by the National Forum of Music in Wrocław in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York....
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8th Jazztopad Festival NYC presents:
Amalia Umeda – violin; Marta Sanchez- piano; Michael Bates- bass; Lesley Mok - drums
8pm; $20; Tickets do not guarantee a seat. Half of capacity is standing.
The paradigm-shifting Polish festival Jazztopad makes its annual return to New York City this summer, with a series of genre-blurring events in venues around the city between June 13-16. Since signing on as artistic director of the annual gathering in Wroclaw, Poland in 2008, Piotr Turkiewicz has steadily reshaped the event, transforming it from a landing spot for touring artists and reimagining it as a creative hothouse built on long-term relationships, style-crossing collaborations, and community involvement. The New York program includes the world premiere of a new Kris Davis work featuring her own piano playing and the acclaimed Polish string ensemble Lutosławski Quartet (this event will be live-streamed from Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center), as well as intimate improv sessions built around the young Polish violinist Amalia Umeda (including with Spanish-American pianist Marta Sánchez, and American bassists Michael Bates and Stephan Crump as well as drummer Lesley Mok, recent winner of the Deutscher Jazzpreis for Best International Debut Album), all reflecting a holistic embrace of creative music unencumbered by arbitrary genre boundaries. The program will also feature the North American premiere of “The Crow” by the Australian ensemble Hand to Earth along with performances by bassist Michael Bates, working with his group Acrobat and Lutosławski Quartet, complementing his incisive arrangements of music by the composer Witold Lutosławski with brand new adaptations of music by Karol Szymanowski. As usual, the US edition of Jazztopad has been organized by the National Forum of Music in Wrocław in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.
As part of Jazztopad’s commitment to erasing borders this year’s program includes violinist Amalia Umeda, an exciting musician whose development and growth has been nourished in part by various Jazztopad projects.
Despite the name of the festival he’s devoted to forging programs that elide any single musical tradition.
While the premieres take place in beloved locations at Lincoln Center, Jazztopad is just as excited about the performances at small venues like Brooklyn’s Barbès, where Amalia Umeda will improvise with pianist Marta Sánchez, drummer Lesley Mok and bassist Michael Bates, among others. Like in Poland, it’s the house concerts and shows in small clubs that are the soul of the festival, where the musicians meet. It’s about a shared vibe.
Amalia Umeda
When creating music, what violinist, composer and arranger Amalia Umeda values most is the possibility of manipulating space, reflecting various emotional states, building tensions, and illustrating even the most abstract ideas. Amalia is one of 6 artists selected for the international program Footprints Europe 2021. In August 2022, as a result of that program, the quartet started the Nowoświt Footprints tour. The tour included concerts at the Oslo Jazz Festival (Oslo, Norway), Umea Jazz Festival (Umea, Sweden), Cologne Jazzweek/NICA Exchange (Cologne, Germany), Nasjonal Jazzscene (Oslo, Norway), NOSPR (Katowice, Poland), Periscope (Lyon, France), Bimhuis (Amsterdam, Netherlands), and Jazzahead! European Showcase (Bremen, Germany). Amalia is the winner of the 3rd prize at the Zbigniew Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition 2022, a special prize at the Young Crocus Jazz Contest 2021 (Amalia Umeda Quartet), and the 2nd prize at the Blue Note Poznań Competition 2020 (solo category).
ABOUT JAZZTOPAD
Jazztopad Festival, the leading event of its kind in Poland, has organized satellite editions all over the world (Japan, Turkey, South Korea) in collaboration with such partners as Jarasum International Jazz Festival, Tokyo Jazz Festival, Akbank Jazz Festival, TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. For 20 years, the festival has been commissioning music from some of the most important American artists including Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, Jason Moran, William Parker, Vijay Iyer and Terence Blanchard, James Brandon Lewis and Craig Taborn. The international creative partnerships of Jazztopad include such prestigious organizations as the Monterey Jazz Festival, Kennedy Center, London Jazz Festival and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Live recordings from the festival have been released on ECM and Blue Note Records.
Since Artistic Director Piotr Turkiewicz and General Director Andrzej Kosendiak took the reins in 2008, the event has become one of Europe’s premier jazz festivals, a dynamic endeavor that showcases the finest homegrown talent and engages some of the most storied figures in the music’s history with ambitious commissions. From the beginning, Turkiewicz has sought to elevate jazz from his homeland, programming local musicians in Wrocław, but also organizing performances for them around the world, in collaboration with renowned jazz artists in the US and other countries.
This project is organized by the National Forum of Music in Wrocław in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.
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