Let me begin – in your book I was interested in the fact that when you ask what mostly builds the effectiveness of music: form or articulation, only two musicians pointed out to you that these are simply two different things…

Wojtek Waglewski and Rafał Gorzycki…

Yes, and I would agree with them. When you learn the trumpet, you learn that there are several types of articulation: legato, portato, classical articulation and, let’s say, jazz articulation. That’s how Janusz Zdunek taught me – and I was terribly excited at the time and I told him: „fuck, Zdunek teach me jazz improvisation!” – he said: „no, we’re learning all the scales one by one in four types of articulation”. And he played me a beat from the keyboard and told me to perform each scale in these four ways, so that I could then use them interchangeably in improvisation, and that was very wise. He was the first to point this out to me and I am eternally grateful to him. Only after a year did we start our first rehearsals with improvisation, based on some simple standards, and that gave me a great base… that’s about articulation. And the form for me refers to the whole piece: whether we improvise, playing in a completely open way, or we arrange partially, or we arrange exactly… That’s how I understand it, and you somehow connect it… and not only you, because only these two musicians think like me (laughter).

The driving force behind asking this question, apart from my own thoughts, was that… I received a different answer every time!

That surprised me, because for me from the beginning this difference was purely technical, or maybe more musicological.

Now you made me realize something else – the birth of this question came from my short adventure with musicology and one of its effects, namely the distance to form. I lasted three months at these studies and studying form really hurt me. Sitting over notes and wondering whether the motif is: ta-ta, or ta-ta-ta-ta, or ta-ta-ta-ta-tu-tu… God. I really didn’t want to try listening to music like that. I don’t know if it’s listening at all… It reminded me more of a mathematical and geometrical science. I’m glad I went to musicology when I was twenty-eight and I had already thought through many things in the context of listening on my own, so it didn’t change me. This episode helped me in one way – I got to know some literature and a few cool people, including lecturers, with whom I am still in touch. I also met people who, when they graduated from musicology, had been to maybe twenty concerts in total; that was unthinkable for me, so I ran away from there.

Yes, indeed – musicology, as you said, focuses primarily on the development of form, and studying at instrumental departments is more about articulation issues, because you play an instrument. Instrumentalists are naturally more interested in articulation. Classicists have it written down with dots or dashes, and we – sitting in a big band – have it written down that a dot means staccato, i.e. short, and a peak is also a short sound, but longer. A slur is connected notes and so on…

Sure. You mentioned two separate issues. I would like to move on from this topic to a specific type of concert situation – if there is no agreement on stage, or let’s say you don’t like how another musician plays, do you always want to establish this dialogue despite the difficulties? Or, on the contrary, do you want to somehow make them understand that something is wrong and you are playing in spite of them? And if something like this happens at all, what does it give? Can it change the way we think about music, or is it rather an event that should be quickly forgotten?

I have come across such a question, this issue and such cases. Free-improv musicians in particular present opposite attitudes towards each other and play in spite of each other. Tomek Gwinciński said so in your book, and to me Łoskot always sounded like a machine and it didn’t really fit with reality. From their opposites one big pulsating engine was created, but coming back – I ALWAYS try to establish a dialogue. For me, this is the point of improvisation.

If we’re on the subject of the word „dialogue” – after each of your concerts I get the impression that when you play you create some kind of story, but this story is always very abstract, and if there is a brighter moment in it, I rather consider it a manifestation of gallows humor. So we have three elements: narrative, a kind of melancholy and abstraction – is that a goal? Does it come out of you naturally and you don’t think about it at all? Or maybe you see it completely differently?

Well, that’s a very cool observation and a cool question. Dave Douglas said in some long interview – still in the famous Diapazon, which later ceased to exist, one of the first jazz portals – and that was Dave Douglas from the period when he recorded quite interesting albums, because then he went into very mainstream jazz… He said something that I related to myself and in which I found myself, namely that even when improvising he tries to give this improvisation a form. I don’t know if I can improvise in such a TOTALLY open way at all? I always try to start from something and return to something and you can hear that on my records. People who listen to these records confirm what you said about the narrative, that’s how it is, I have it in me and I think there’s no point fighting it – that’s my nature. Janusz Zdunek said that he stopped playing freestyle because he likes to have some kind of horizon outlined and I’m the same way – I don’t like to feel like a castaway on a raft, who’s driving fast and can’t see land. I rather sail out and I prefer to have this piece of an island with three palm trees in front of me, like in a cartoon (laughter). And you know, it’s the open sea, sharks swim, all around this fairytale world that we paint and that we grew up in, but I keep rowing towards these trees with coconuts (laughter), so every time I choose a course and a goal, with an outline of the theme or sketching… Andrzej Przybielski always used to say: „Gentlemen, I brought a few such lines”. He grandly called them compositions, but they weren’t compositions at all, just beautiful melodies – very catchy, by the way – from which SOMETHING was created. Andrzej had such a very specific gift, I noticed it in him and maybe it had some influence on me. There are such nuances heard in other musicians, which, like a transducer in a guitar, I processed by myself; because at some point you have to sit down and think about who you really are. Because you can listen to your masters: Miles Davis, Tomasz Stańko, but the question still remains what you have to say and I once answered it to myself that my path is exactly like that. And I try to introduce this kind of abstraction that you mentioned, because obviousness really bothers me.

You said what is yours, and now I will ask about something that you do not have, and interestingly, Joanna Duda recently told me about a similar process – she has been completely avoiding the issue of tempo and rhythm. I think it is similar with you – I have not found any obvious groove in your parts in recent years. These sounds are definitely more „spread out”, and on top of that, you sometimes go into ABSOLUTE silence at concerts, even when people are talking. Here in Ps Andaluzyjski something like that happened – the audience was getting louder and louder, and you played quieter and quieter, you maintained this silence for a few, maybe a dozen or so seconds… Jacek Mazurkiewicz also mentioned to me that when you were recording the album, each of you chose something different: Jacek Buhl groovy, and you, on the contrary, stuck to open fragments. And finally, moving on to the questions: where did this skipping of rhythm come from in your case? And another observation, that even when you are expressive, you don’t become a screamer – you don’t want to yell? Is that not in your nature either? Or do you think that subtlety is some kind of key and you stick to it for other reasons?

Another cool observation. You’ve got me a little screwed with this groove, I’ve actually been playing little rhythmic music lately and I have a lot of such „flying” bands, I still keep somewhere outside the rhythm and Jacek Buhl is the same – he had a period where he played definitely rhythmically, and now the groove is also gone. The Sundial project has basically no bass and we play, somehow still swinging. I have some problem with playing obvious grooves. Maybe because I spent eight years in the Contemporary Noise Sextet and ten years in Sing Sing Penelope, and these were very loud and settled bands, which sometimes irritated me a lot, that we were just FUCKING UP… all the time. That was partly the phenomenon of these bands: loads of people would come to see them, everyone was rocking out and the concerts were totally awesome, but I got really tired of it after a while. In these groups, the drummers played very specifically and strongly – that’s how Bartek Kapsa plays, and it’s really cool, Gorzyc [Rafał Gorzycki] also had a fusion period then, very „forward”, he’s a diverse drummer, but the band as a whole was going in that direction. I got tired of it, and before that I had experience with reggae, which is basically just rhythm, so we played in the tat-tararat-tirat-tat section… Besides, I love reggae and dub, but subconsciously I moved away from it because I got fed up… Maybe I need to start playing like that again? (laughter)

And is it easier to play such spatial shades in duets? I’m asking because you have a lot of them…

Duets are really cool, creative and intimate. On the one hand, you have to be focused all the time, and on the other hand, I sometimes feel like I’m playing solo, but it’s not solo – it’s not like you’re standing naked. Solo is a terrible formula, I recorded a solo album, but it’s a different situation – very hothouse, in a sense manufactured… I don’t know if I’ll ever be convinced to do solo concerts, and in a duet, what we talked about earlier happens, which is a constant dialogue. My absolute favorite situation in improvisation, very demanding. You can show yourself a lot, and at the same time there’s still a conversation going on, which is why it’s much more interesting than solo; in solo, there’s basically no improvisation, usually solo performances – the good ones – are prepared in detail, because you can’t talk to yourself. I’ve seen spontaneous solo concerts, even by very good musicians, and after five minutes I’d go out for a beer. Piotr Wojtasik mentioned that even the greatest creators of genres, such as Coltrane or Davis, played in bands and they were very good bands – as if you harnessed four horses and they pulled the cart, they had a lot of strength, and in solo there was only one horse and he could barely do it. The idea of the band is based on the strength of these few horses, then everything mutually propels itself, which is why solo improvisation is, in my opinion, very slippery. You need skills, a lot of self-confidence, a certain concept… a difficult thing. And in a duet there is already mutual throwing of the ball, or balance like on a seesaw – if you don’t bounce, your friend will bounce you, sometimes you hang up, someone falls there… but we keep on swinging.

You used the word „produced”. You know, it’s changing a bit now, but generally I’m still not a record guy – concerts gave me and still give me the most emotions and cognitive values. And I may not listen to records, but musicians still release them – what did listening to records give you and to what extent is it a different experience than listening to concerts? And from a musician’s perspective, to what extent are these differentiating experiences? Is the record a problematic space at all, for example due to the compromises we talked about earlier and market and supply issues? Do you like CD format at all?

For me, concerts and listening to albums with mates, at home parties over a beer we went on at the same time, sometimes we smoked something, and such a joint experience of records… I remember this type of listening to the first SBB… beautiful situations. I was initially associated with the punk-hardcore scene, but after that first shock, something was missing, I started looking and ended up in Mózg. And there were incredible things happening there in the nineties, although I didn’t limit myself to that place and environment: I went to Eljazz, to reggae concerts, and I would also catch myself coming back from concerts so dazed, looking at all those records and thinking: „fuck, what am I supposed to put on now?”. I would get up in the morning and feel like I couldn’t play anything! It wasn’t until I started borrowing music – even from Leszek from Mózg – and I had access to completely off: early Gong, Maestro Trytony, and that somehow started to bring me closer to what I was hearing, although it still wasn’t exactly IT, because these things can’t be transferred to a record. Besides, you know exactly what I’m talking about…

Oh yeah (laughter).

And that atmosphere… For me, Łoskot, for example, was a typical concert band that I saw an incredible number of times: in Mózg, I went to Gdynia, to Toruń, and I experienced those concerts very deeply; and when I bought their concert album I wondered: „what the fuck is going on?” It rolled off my back like water off a duck’s back. And you know, these doubts – was I drunk every time? Or stoned? What happened at all? What is this music and what was the music at the concert? What is the truth?

Sure…

Piotr Pawlak explained it to me a bit, in his book about the history of Yassu he says that it wasn’t a successful concert, but that still doesn’t explain it. These are the differences. However, today when I’m a musician who records albums I know perfectly well how it’s done. The studio has completely different properties than a concert. At a concert you release this music, the very fact of being here and now matters and that’s why I treat albums differently – I think that recording live albums is slightly… pointless. For me, an album is something prepared and produced. The concept and calling card of the flu, such a band in a nutshell. And this is supposed to be an incentive to come to the concert, and it will be even better at the concert – – an album is a condensation, a pill, and that’s why I hate recording seventy-minute albums. So an album is an album, and if you want live… come to the concert (laughter), but I like CDs.

And have you ever had a producer in the studio? So that someone helped you get something more out of yourself? What makes you feel good in this situation?

This is also an interesting question; there are no producers in Poland at all, for financial reasons. And the market itself is still small, narrow and immature – yes, „immature” is probably the right word. All musicians do everything themselves: they record, travel, organize… And this terrible syndrome called „I know everything best” is created. It is tragic, it is starting to bother me a lot and I will tell you honestly that I would like to have a producer. Someone comes from the outside and helps me put together an album, choose good approaches and says: „Wojtek, it will be good if this album looks like this and that”. I will put it a bit brutally – the album is supposed to present the band to the market and it is supposed to help more people come to the concert and at the concert you can go crazy and make up for the losses. And in the studio, let’s make sure that the losses aren’t too big, but you’ll keep your character, because who’s going to listen to a twenty-minute improvisation apart from the musician himself and his colleagues? People don’t focus on a three-minute music video anymore. In this respect, foreign countries are more advanced, even the jazz ones. That’s what happens, look at big labels like ACT or ECM – that’s how they do business: they polish the sound, polish it, they get a lot of criticism, but their musicians, live, sound the same all the time. In Poland, this formula doesn’t work, Poles aren’t taught it at all. Here, everyone prefers to argue: „I’ll take this one! and I’ll take that one!” And the whole process drags on, because everyone has a different vision. And instead of such conversations, I’d like a guy to come and say: „Gentlemen – this, this, this and this.” That’s it. And let everyone listen to him. Many colleagues will probably kill me for saying that.

And staying with the band, but moving to a concert – how do you cope with touring?

It all depends on the proportions, but I’ll say it briefly and to the point: I don’t play long tours now. Referring to the previous question – I’m my own manager and I can’t handle things like that. I play two-three concerts, sometimes singles… With Innercity [Ensemble] we play long tours, it’s a big band, but so nice that being with them is really just a pleasure. There was a period with Contemporary Noise Sextet and Sing Sing Penelope, when we played big away tours, almost every weekend, in the fall, and it was tiring, because I was still working in a store at the time and had a small child. Heavy hardcore, I also started getting sick… It was a blow, because you can’t survive two months without drinking, smoking cigarettes all the time, so you get into these streaks and you’re always on the fly. In excess, it’s not pleasant and I wouldn’t like to repeat such experiences, but in a reasonable dose it doesn’t bother me. Besides, now I play with people with whom we have good relationships. That’s the basis – don’t play with toxic people.

Now I will refer to Rafał Gorzycki’s words – he said that music can be such a precise language that it has no transformations. Does this language, developed musically, only help on stage? Or does it also affect various situations off stage? Is it easier to communicate later on other levels? And the second thing is the issue of strong emotions – you know, I don’t have many such experiences, but a few I do. Where you suddenly feel that people liked what you did, they let you feel it and then you are on a roll, but then you come back home and have to buy potatoes… I don’t know how I would endure such dissonance in the long run. Can you even get some distance from it?

Regarding communication – if you perform on stage, it is certainly easier off stage as well. You know, I don’t function as a job musician, so the basis of these bands is honest and good relations. Of course: I don’t see Ksawery [Wójciński], Jacek Buhl, Jacek Mazurkiewicz or Zbyszek [Chojnacki] every day, but we have constant contact, on Facebook or by phone, we respect each other, we like each other and then we can play. Otherwise it would be difficult. Some tensions do happen and when they reach extreme levels, it may happen that we stop playing, but for now it’s not like that in any case. As for the second question – this rise and fall – can you get some distance? Yes. You get used to it, but when I was travelling a lot, I would come back in the morning drunk, and then the child had to be packed for school… When you have everything sorted out in your family, the other side puts you in line: take a shower, eat a Snickers and stop being a star (laughter) and that’s also important. Some people, unfortunately, have such a personality that after four days on the road, they think they don’t have to do anything anymore. I have friends who, after their trips, just sat around and smoked cigarettes, then the bands fell apart, and they still smoke those cigarettes and are surprised that something went wrong and they slowly can’t afford those cigarettes anymore. But I agree – at first this discord can be unpleasant and difficult. When I read Dave Gahan’s biography, I understand that this difference is so terrible that he constantly swallows handfuls of pills and can’t keep his family life in check. If someone plays a year-long tour in stadiums, is constantly high, it’s NOT POSSIBLE. It’s no longer reconciled. I don’t know if – if I came back after a year – I would be able to meet my child and wife… It’s a departure and I think that such people can’t be normal, it’s beyond their strength. The same with old jazz musicians: they played every day, maybe they didn’t earn much money, but they were always on: a concert, a session… All the time. Now times are a bit different, these artistic activities are more spread out, so I have more to do with such ordinary life; but I have contact with the instrument every day.

Sure. Regarding the instrument – is it still undiscovered for you, or maybe you’ve eaten your fill of the trumpet and you have to look for new ways not to get bored with it?

I used to listen to electronic music a lot, hence the antics I play – like today – with Zbyszek, but man… the acoustic trumpet is a real challenge. It’s still a field to explore and I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to explore it, because I only started playing it at the age of twenty, and that pretty much rules out professional playing. Everyone is surprised that I play at all. Today, kids start at the age of five, six, you know, the muscles are developing. And I spent my early years playing guitar, playing punk rock, I was interested in new wave, cold wave… And these experiences transferred to the trumpet – I hear music differently, I play with effects. At first, trumpet players would come to me and ask: „My God, what means are you using?!” and for me – precisely because of the contact with the paddle – these movements were natural. Now I’ve even returned to the guitar and I’m trying, more consciously, to squeeze something out of it, because before I treated it intuitively and that’s why we can talk about the Army, Israel and the Kryzys Brigade. I come from an artistic family in general – although not a musical one – and maybe that’s why I’ve never been interested in music as a technique, although the technical aspect of the trumpet can be fascinating, but it’s related, among other things, to the setting of the embouchure, and because of my late start I have certain limitations on my face (laughter).

And in view of what you said – how do you approach teaching itself, already as a teacher?

It’s a strange situation. Two months ago I became a teacher. By accident, because in Toruń the music school opened a jazz major, and I had just finished jazz studies. It is known that Polish secondary schools do not teach jazz and believe that this music does not exist, just like pop music. In a school in Bydgoszcz it is unthinkable, but Toruń opened such a course and my friend taught there. It is a fledgling initiative and there are two girls there. Of course, as an intern, I get some ridiculous money, enough for commuting and a hamburger (laughter). And since my friend is quite busy, he works for television, he called me and said he would no longer teach at the school because it doesn’t pay off and asked if I wanted to. And I said that apart from playing I don’t do anything, of course I have a problem with health insurance, so maybe I could take it? And indeed – I’ve been dealing with the matter since February, there are two beginner teenagers, but when I saw the requirements, I was a little scared. This school roller has its rules – although the headmistress in Toruń is really very nice and said: „Mr. Wojtek, you have a free hand with the youth, do it”. But then the head of the section came and I heard: „this exam, in June, this, then you come with the girls here, here and on this date”. You know, on the principle of having your cake and eating it too – they want it to be creative and cool, but on the other hand the pressure is already starting. The initial plan turns into constant preparations for the next exams and it’s getting difficult, because there’s slowly running out of time for jazz… For now, I don’t know how it will develop, there are some prospects, but the Polish education system is totally idiotic, madness… I only had to sit for three hours at the council and I understood what it was all about. Speeches, debates, reports and all this has to be done, because it brings money from the ministry – you know. If a teacher shows up, there’s additional money, and trying to stop it seems impossible. If I said that it makes no sense, I’d probably be shot. The dream of more relaxed music-making, music centers, and only at a later stage entering the professional level, I don’t know if it’s even realistic in Poland, because it would require turning the Vistula River over with a stick. Well, but I’m trying not to fall under this steamroller and… play the trumpet with these girls.

The conversation took place on March 14, 2019 at the Pies Andaluzyjski club in Poznań.
The photo comes from the artist’s social media.