Mikołaj Trzaska’s concert “Eternity for a While”

Trzaska’s latest project is titled “Eternity For A While”. It is dedicated to the memory of the Jewish community, whose presence was a permanent and significant element of social and cultural life in pre-war Poland. Retrieving it from oblivion is the main theme of this musical monodrama. The concert repertoire includes ancient nigunas, ritual, magical Jewish songs, interspersed with original compositions and improvisations.

Mikołaj Trzaska – saxophonist and film music composer. He studied at the Faculty of Painting and Multimedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Musically, his work is rooted in yass – an artistic and social movement that, at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, rebelled against the Polish jazz environment gone stagnant. Trzaska was the co-founder of the most important yass bands: the legendary Miłość, and the leader of Łoskot. Although yass’s momentum faded, it became a significant contribution to the Polish and European improvisational scene. After the yass period, Trzaska recorded several albums with the Oleś brothers. He accompanied poets and writers – M. Świetlicki, J. Andruchowycz, Andrzej Stasiuk. 

 Today he is the leader and participant of several international projects: INNER EAR, IRCHA, TRIO VOLUMEN, RESONANCE ENSAMBLE. Apart from being involved in radical contemporary free jazz scene, he has been researching the identity of the contemporary language of Jewish music, creating projects such as SHOFAR, actively cooperating with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. He travels around the world and has had the opportunity to collaborate with the greats musicians of world jazz, including: with Leser Bowie, Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermak, Evan Parker. He recorded countless albums.

 Trzaska also became known as a composer, writing music for Wojciech Smarzowski’s films. Trzaska’s music can also be heard in the films by Paweł Maślona and the pictures by Babis Makridis and Janis Nords. He is a two-time winner of Eagles (Polish Film Award) and an individual award for music at the Gdynia Film Festival. 

 He is a lecturer at the Faculty of Film and Audiovisual Culture at the University of Gdańsk. Two years ago, the artist’s biography was published by Świat Literacki publishing house under the title “Wrzeszcz”.