I want to start with a thought that comes back to me after each of your concerts – is it absolutely necessary for you to draw some blood in your art?

Do you have that impression?

Yes. I mean that huge commitment – there are moments, because of course it doesn’t last the whole concert, when it seems to me that all your senses are working at maximum speed and that this state is touching certain limits.

I think it used to be like that, because I really tried to engage my physical strength more and with time comes such an ability that you manage to obtain a resultant composed of other elements – it looks a bit like a rifle from Star Wars, when after firing several laser beams meet. It’s a kind of work with the mind, emotions and physical strength – and when all of this is combined at one point, you achieve a state of internal unity and a very simple, powerful sound is created, which even when quieter remains touching and has some story or literary thread in it. It also depends on the people I play with, because we as a band are like spiders, building nets and spiderwebs from these bundles – sometimes we meet, sometimes we do a split and place these bundles in different spaces, we create quadraphonic, triophonic or pentatophonic stories and that’s what I like about it. It happens on the basis of musical structure, narrative, but also sound in the strict sense. I want to be modest here and say that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, because it’s true – you have better and worse days. I don’t know how it was today. The audience’s reaction is also important to me, because it’s a bundle built from the other side and when everything then comes together inside, this space thickens. It’s a show that has to happen live. And I’m not convinced about this blood, because I don’t have it on my fingers and it didn’t spill into my saxophone – I’m still alive, but it’s a kind of plasma, some kind of… snot (laughter), although that’s obviously the wrong word. It is some kind of substance.

You said about sound – the difference in sonority between your instruments is huge. What do you use a clarinet for, for example, and a saxophone for?

It is a bit like asking someone to bring you a piece of meat on a plate, and you wonder what the fork is for, and what the knife is for (laughter). These are tools that help you describe reality in different ways. Obviously, the clarinet will not growl and piglet, and the baritone will do the opposite… although no! The baritone turns out to be an extremely delicate instrument, with such a graceful, flute-like space, and it, especially in the upper register, is extremely lyrical, and this surprises me a bit. My history with the baritone is long, but not very common. Now I have given myself over to it a bit because… Well, because it has become fashionable (laughter) and I know why. It is very universal, modern. And I reach for the clarinet because I cannot play it.

You mentioned playing in a band in the first question, and I would like to ask you about solo concerts. When I talked to Józef Skrzek, he compared this situation to a public confession and I wonder if this – so direct – exposure changed your perspective a bit and if, for example, it translated in some way into playing in larger bands?

Yes. And that’s nice what Józef Skrzek said and after such a sentence I actually have nothing to add. It’s a kind of meeting with yourself, but with yourself as you are – you can’t cheat and any attempt to show off your musical eloquence ends up in the toilet right away, i.e. you end up in the toilet and suddenly everything spills out on you. You discover your defenselessness and this also has to happen in a band, but it’s good to have this experience of playing alone. I like this kind of solitude, when you know that you’re not alone after all because you enter into a dialogue with yourself. I think that’s what writers and poets do too – they have an internal conversation, built on the initial series of questions and answers, and then they develop that story. However, I am a visual musician by education, meaning that my musical education was an art education and for me drawing or painting [is the basis] – so I follow the line, add the next one and from that the form is built. It gets crossed somewhere, gets confused somewhere… Because you start on a white sheet of paper and you have to take that risk and either you ruin it or you move on. When you play solo, it’s similar – it’s as if you were painting on a pristine white sheet of paper with black paint that can’t be erased, but it’s a nice journey. If you understand the fact that this innocence is something noble, which I think many musicians have a problem with, but my masters showed me that it’s the greatest strength, then you can rely on yourself and then you don’t do it anymore. You just want to play well, you go on stage and you know what it’s about. I like to play concerts – not only solo ones – on the road, because it is road music; the first concert opens it, you get on the train like at the station, then you get in the car, the bus, you are still on the road and every time you are one step further. It is a kind of a series. My music is a cheap, Brazilian series…

I can’t listen to it (laughter), you’re terrible…

…which is authentic, rough, unsuccessful and on this I try to build something that is shaky and sometimes very strong. I don’t have a final opinion, I don’t try to codify it or name it and I think that’s good. Of course I can describe it, but I don’t want to stop at some closed, final theories.

Sure. You said about the path – in the magazine Fragile, in a joint interview with Rafał Mazur and Michał Górczyński on the subject of your own musical language you said that it is important for it to be your own first and foremost and here’s a quote: set by your own inner grandmother years ago. And do you still have to fight for it, or are you only expanding it, and secondly, do you notice any particular turning points on the path of its formation?

Let’s go back to Grandma – this is another issue that I brought to the surface then in a rather abstract form, and here it’s about the history of instinct. So instinct [silence and a deep breath] is the most important. You have to dig into it. Animals have it naturally, and improvised music is the music of animals, and when I spoke of the inner grandmother, I meant instinct. I once read in Miłosz that instinct is nothing more than generational memory. It is passed down from our great-grandmothers, grandmothers in genes, in blood, in upbringing, culture and so on… And you base your sound on that – and then it is that sound. Not the sound of Michael Brecker, Peter Brotzmann, Tomasz Stańko, because you extract its meaning, depth, power or weakness from some tradition that is embedded in you. This is work in which you MUST trust yourself. And I have many stages behind me, because of course this language changes, although on some level it is still the same. However, thinking about it changes seriously – I used to think that you have to learn to play it as best as you can, that it has to be very certain, and now I put on such a cliché of doubt, because it is good to keep it in such a state that it remains ambiguous and then it can mean many things. When you describe a scene with one sound, you have to play – I don’t think about the whole melody, just one sound – a specific emotional state, or a specific story, and it’s the same G, but it will sound sad sometimes, and sometimes very happy in one tone. The issue of imposing internal content, your own content, on it [is important], because when you play with thought, meaning and emotional sense, you illustrate the situation, and for me this process is extremely important. I close my eyes while playing, because I see structures, sometimes very abstract, and sometimes the opposite – I have figurative images in front of my eyes, which appear like fractals, and I have come to terms with it. At first, I thought it was a mental illness, and now I see that this is probably how it has to be.

You said a lot about a certain kind of emotion, I don’t want to force a definition, but I wonder what makes a good concert for you?

You know, I avoid such categorical statements, because to be completely honest, I can find fault with every concert and I always have some doubts. Unfortunately, I am tainted by a great deal of knowledge about music, creating forms, building unity, relationships, counterpoints… and it seems to me that each time something can be done better, and when it’s really good, there’s no point in analyzing it. You can talk to yourself that I liked it here, that it was too boring here, that we played like yesterday and I don’t like it as much as I did then… And that’s what happens because the context has changed – each time you have to grow into the space you’re in, like a tree, but one that moves very quickly and has reflexes, like a mimosa from a fairy tale that uses an unexpected martial art and you don’t know how it will react – just like in Kung Fu.

We were at a concert, so let’s move to the studio. Listening to Delta Tree I had the impression that you must feel very good in this room.

Yes.

This is interesting in that for many musicians it is quite a problem. How do you find your way around it and where is the difference between a studio and a concert for you?

It varies a lot. I’ll tell you that I don’t feel safe in every studio and I don’t feel at home with every sound engineer. I have to have great conditions and [referring to the concert] the sound engineer is my audience. This album was recorded at a difficult time. Music wasn’t as important as what was happening in my life at the time, I had a lot of traumatic stories connected with turning 50, but I think that if I enter the studio now I will also record such an album and also with Janek Komar. We have a lot in common, similar backgrounds, we understand each other well. Back then it was just the two of us, for a few hours. He set up the microphones and I knew he was doing it for me. I didn’t listen to this music at all on a current basis, because sometimes after a one-time session you go to another room to hear how it sounds, and this time I gave up. The first contact was only at home with the full 4-hour material, from which I selected those over fifty minutes. I admit that listening to the recordings turned out to be a big problem for me, because I really had to see myself and at the beginning I obviously thought that it was only suitable for the trash, because it was too exposed. On the other hand, I knew that I had never recorded an album like this before and I think that every two years I will record an album with a similar attitude. And returning to the studio as a certain space – I generally have no problem with it; there has to be a good room, cool people and you know what? I play so much, I still hold this instrument in my hands, music surrounds me every day in different ways and it became as natural as cutting bread, i.e. I grab the saxophone and ruin the sound, I don’t care about its evenness, I don’t care. I know that in terms of equality and precision I will never be as excellent as Wacław Zimpel, I know that my attribute is something completely different and I am developing it, and there is still a lot to do. I hope that I will overcome this despite various temptations. You know – compositions can be tempting, despite the fact that they also grow from improvisation, because I do not take a piece of paper and write pieces – I play, and then I cut, process, modify, add and then it grows in my mouth, or in my belly, or in my ass… oh yes! In my ass, in my ass, in my ass (laughter).

Finally. You play with musicians from all over the world, you move very widely and in this context I would like to touch on the words of Tomek Stańko, who briefly appeared in our conversation. He once mentioned that what he considers common to Polish artists is a certain melancholic tone, stuck somewhere inside. Do you agree? Did you see that it is there and accept it? Or maybe you use it consciously?

I’ll tell you a cool story! Peter Ole Jørgensen, who is terribly well-versed, gosh – what a record collection he has! It’s also amazing how well he knows Polish music from the 60s, specifically Stańko, Komeda… I think many Polish musicians don’t know as much as he does. And as you know, my decision to play improvised music was related to the fact that I had to leave, because at that time in Poland there was no environment playing this music so declaratively, so I started to travel often to Denmark, Sweden because I had to study somewhere. And when we met, about 15 years ago, Peter Ole said after our first concert together, you are a truly Polish saxophonist, you have this sentimental something. And I absolutely agree with Uncle Tomek. It’s something you can’t control, but something you love, and I love that Polish avant-garde musicians stick to this tradition. And it matters when you meet musicians from Malaysia, Indonesia, do you know what they sound like? They play it using their traditional instruments and techniques, it is so strong then… I also do not hide the fact that my Jewish origins are of great importance. There is no concert when I do not squeeze in something Jewish, I did it today and even if I do not put in a scale, at least some kind of mood… I really cannot restrain myself! Besides, that is not the point of doing it.

And here’s a bit of humor at the end…

Come on!

You once said that you have a friend from Denmark who has a collection of soaps from Polish hotels at home. Is that Peter Ole?

Yes, yes, definitely Peter Ole (laughter).