I’ll start with the fact that last year saw the premiere of Jagoda Szmytka’s piece written for the Kronos Quartet Means of transport. Between the string parts, there were samples imitating, as the title suggests, the sounds of the street, car horns, trams and so on… Listening to you today, I thought that the keyword for this music is situation and its kinesthetic dimension. I also remembered what Raphael Rogiński said, that music should be, in his opinion, the soundtrack of reality; but at the same time, it didn’t seem to me that your pieces played any role of commentary or had a journalistic function. Participation in these situations was more important than their evaluation or observation, and all of them and the thoughts involved in them were reflected in the sounds revealed today, as in a mirror. And returning to Jagoda Szmytka’s piece – I think she had a similar idea, but she completely failed at it. I took the whole thing as a shallow and somehow superficial illustration… And a more general thought about today’s concert, namely the general need for concentration – because this music was ONLY for listening… do you agree with what I said at all? (laughter)

From the beginning – I haven’t heard Jagoda Szmytka’s piece, so it’s hard for me to relate and comment on this topic. I know her personally, I appreciate what she does, she has some idea for herself and I think she realizes it very well. Jagoda also has such knowledge that I have never encountered before, she is an outstanding person and you can’t take that away from her. And I agree with the thought that you expressed in your long sentence – I started making this album in 2016, but I collected materials much earlier and they are the result of many different coordinates that happened then and now: my travels, work with the theater, I did a lot of field recording, I had a lot to do with language… Language fascinates me. In my music, words have a very important place and – as you said – they do not have a journalistic function, not at all. It is hard for me to say how I actually use them… They are definitely an integral part of music, and this often fails, and that is why I wanted to find an instrumentation of the sound of the voice, which, by composing with subsequent layers, creates a new value. There is a theory that without understanding the content contained in the sentence, we can read it from the intonation and grasp the meaning of the words intuitively. It is beautiful and then you do not have to sing the melody, because it is already there! In every word or sentence read by the narrator, when he says: Im Hades haltet dein Name wieder… An intriguing phenomenon and issue; that is why there is so much voice and text in my music… or so I think (laughter).

Does the number of people in the room matter? Does it affect the start and development of the sound? And… nobody talked today.

I don’t put it in such a hierarchy. It doesn’t matter whether there are few or many of them, but the audience is very important and what is important is that they are there. The intensity of their presence is energetically important. I have played many solo concerts – also electronic ones – and there are usually no murmurs. Maybe it’s a matter of chance? Maybe I come across a good audience? Maybe I manage to hypnotize them? Let’s hope so (laughter), and if that doesn’t work, then I am able to modulate the course of the concert and then I do everything to make them pay attention to me and the means I use work (laughter).

Do you turn up the volume?

Quite the opposite! Because most people want to listen, that’s how the problem is solved…

And how do you approach solo concerts on tour?

This is the first tour with this material and the first concert, so I can answer you on Sunday (laughter), but knowing myself – each subsequent one will be better. Only then do I manage to kick myself on this couch, then I sit down, and I like intensity and routine. I like working and I believe in regularity and that it is somehow compatible with our bodies: we eat the same thing every day, we do similar things, there is some key to that. This touring will be an advantage and I will fight for it to be several concerts every time, day after day, because I know myself, I know that I am a long-distance runner, it gives me a lot and I am terribly happy, because the album opened this path for me, and before it was difficult for me to find motivation to maintain discipline in these solo performances. Now I know that it will work and I am already on the trail of the next album, I can feel what new things are dormant in me.

I did not have the impression that there was any „duplicating notes” at the concert, but at the end you mentioned trying to recreate the studio material…

Yes, but it is not about duplicating – I am not able to play all the recorded layers. I tried to get the extract from them and my way of doing it was to remix myself. There is a piece – a fugue – it has a few presentations of the theme, then there is a middle part and a third, last part. I have to get through this form somehow and it doesn’t matter if I play the theme on the synthesizer and it suddenly stops, or if I fire up a sample that creates a background and then something else… I set myself some tasks for each piece, some of them I mixed up completely, I didn’t play one piece at all, and one of the pieces that I played isn’t on the album at all (laughter). Some of them are absolutely impossible to play without the piano and that’s another challenge and yet… it can be done, it turned out today (laughter).

Oh! Piano – pianists and drummers have a bit of a problem, they often can’t play their instrument at concerts for logistical reasons. Is that a problem for you?

You know what, every instrument has its own soul and you can get something out of each one. The most important thing is for the sound engineer to be able to see it and set it up so that there’s no – excuse the expression – slop in the speakers, you have to be able to hear what I’m playing. I played a lot on a completely beat-up spinet and there’s a lot of it on the record and it was an incredibly inspiring experience and if it was just like that: wonderful, tuned and new, I wouldn’t feel this satisfaction at all. It’s about the fact that it’s the way it is: fucked up, dusty, spitted on, and the lady from the reception carried it with me into a Toyota station wagon… and that’s where I look for beauty. I have a piano that I got from Kuba Janicki – it was a complete corpse and it was renovated, my father put money into it, he did it for me, I prepared it and it’s great! It’s not some pearl of the piano orient (laughter), it’s some German manufacture completely unknown, and it sounded like a firecracker. I made an instrument out of it that I use, because I care about a certain repeatability of sounds – then I achieve coherence. So playing on an instrument that isn’t mine is not a problem, I have a different approach to them, just like to computers.

And speaking of the album, you also took care of the production. Wasn’t the lack of someone from outside a hindrance?

No, no. It definitely makes it easier (laughter). I just have my own vision. I left the lo-fi climate a long time ago and I don’t know if it’s an adequate comparison, but there is this artist Louis Cole and he also, among other things, performs solo, he’s a drummer, absolutely brilliant. And he can play anything: the crappy, cheapest kit and… it always sounds the same. That’s his sound. And this approach to production is probably a sign of these times, there are a lot of people working solo, producing their own stuff. Thundercat, as we know, has a trio, but he records albums under the Thundercat banner and of course Flying Lotus helps him make drums, but somehow I don’t believe he interferes with his vision. I think that – in general – this is the next step in the development of music. There is no longer this distinction that you are a virtuoso of the instrument and someone has to help you create your music – no. It is in you, you play the instrument anyway, you have an idea and you realize it. And the technique is so developed that it will help you with this and relying on: the brain, the heart, the ear and all other available senses, you are able to do something very, very personal and it will correspond to who you are. This distance is getting shorter.

We have come up with different configurations, do you have a favourite number of people in the band?

I like a trio, for me it is the perfect number and there are different interesting stories about it in different religions. I also like duets, I had plenty of them – I still do, by the way – but a trio is somehow unique, it is completeness in total minimalism. There is no one-on-one arrangement, like in a duet, nor two-on-two, like in a quartet, but there is just, damn… one, one, one! And in this case, one is always different from one… I intend to record an album with my trio this year…

And also in terms of the studio – do you like this environment or not at all?

I have no problem with it, but in the studio I only recorded part of the piano part (laughter) and not very big. Sometimes I have a problem when I am alone in the studio, because it is harder to muster adrenaline; I am a child of classical music and I spent a lot of time in rooms that were a bit like small studios, and when you practice, you feel similarly in them. Not at all with the band – I really love the studio back then, I also did studio stuff, I recorded commercials with Marek Raczkowski for Przekrój, which was terribly funny every time, so the studio has great associations for me and I like working there. If I didn’t give so many concerts, maybe I would have become a sound engineer, because I like sitting and tinkering, it’s in my nature.

You said that you are a child of the classics – what do you think about classical education?

I owe the piano technique to the classics above all, which is irreplaceable. If I had studied at a jazz school, I wouldn’t have had access to it, and this is key in many situations, because I don’t have time to practice and thanks to that I am able to stay in shape. In classical studies, I had a subject called band and everything I learned in this subject – and the University of Gdańsk has a very good chamber music section – has proven itself in other bands. EVERYTHING, really. I am far from artificial divisions and creating boundaries; pieces from 200 or 300 years ago are simply pieces from the past and we don’t have to separate them from the present, why? Renaissance music, pre-Baroque music… I’m very happy that there are, for example, more and more performances of older music on the pianoforte, and not on the grand piano. It’s an instrument that preceded the pianoforte a bit – it has a different mechanism, a different playing technique… Or the sound of the viola de gamba – I draw from that, because it’s a mine and I will always look in these areas as well; and it’s good that today’s composers are starting to reach for those means that give them jazz-improvisational paths. There’s a nice interpenetration. You don’t have to swallow a broomstick and pretend to be who knows who. They compose, do their own thing and it’s accessible to people, and not some intellectual, cold, thoughtful thing that dominated in the avant-garde sixties or seventies. Currently it’s something else, a new fusion is being created and it’s great, they are already relaxed… Wojtek Blecharz is relaxed and Jagoda Szmytka too (laughter).

The conversation took place / 07.II.2019 / in the Poznań club Pies Andaluzyjski.