Makowicz plays Kobylinski

Adam Makowicz is a Polish pianist, who performs jazz and classical piano pieces, as well as his own compositions. Besides playing solo, he has workedwith such musicians as Michał Urbaniak and Leszek Możdżer, as well as with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC, at the Kennedy Centre, at the Carnegie Hall, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and other major orchestras at concert halls in Americas and in Europe. His technical mastery as jazz pianist has been compared to that of Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and Errol Garner, among others. His speciality in classical piano since his studies in the 1950s has been the music of Chopin.

He started playing piano when he was ten, his first teacher being his mother - a pianist and singer. He was a student of the music schools in Rybnik and Katowice, and continued his studies at the Music Secondary School in Kraków. In the mid-1950s, thanks to the Music USA Jazz Hour radio programmes of Willis Conover, the U.S. promoter of jazz, he became fascinated with this music, its rhythm and freedom of improvisation, especially when performed by such maestros of the piano as Art Tatum or Erroll Garner. Overcoming cultural restrictions under communism, he listened to the Voice of America every night, and eventually developed a passion for modern jazz. He dropped out of school in 1956 and linked up with the Helicon jazz club in Kraków (where he lived, practised, and gave concerts).

In 1962, together with trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, he formed the band Jazz Darings, recognized as the first European jazz combo. In 1963 the band won first prize at the Southern Poland Jazz Competition. From that moment, the greatest Polish jazzmen started inviting Makowicz to play the piano with them, including Andrzej Kurylewicz, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Michał Urbaniak, Jan "Ptaszyn" Wróblewski, and the group Novi Singers. At the same time, he developed his skills as a composer, and at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s included the Fender electric piano in his range of instruments. He became a member of Michał Urbaniak's new band Constellation in 1970. He featured on vocalist Urszula Dudziak's album in 1972. He played in Tomasz Stańko's band Unit in 1973-76, and has performed with Duke Ellington's orchestra. Unique project "Makowicz plays Kobylinski" reflects in a very charming way the most beautiful compositions of Krzysztof Kobylinski. During the concert we can admire Kobylinski's output in performance of Makowicz.


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