Piotr Damasiewicz / Dominik Wania | Erland Dahlen

Piotr Damasiewicz / Dominik Wania

Piotr Damasiewicz – composer, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, traveler, and curator of international music platforms. In addition to trumpet performance, he studied double bass, piano, and classical singing – including Gregorian chant. He also pursued choral and chamber conducting, as well as arranging and composition. His artistic work draws on the language of jazz, 20th-century classical music, ethnic traditions, contemporary music, including European improvised music and experimental forms.

Damasiewicz represented Poland in four international music platforms: Take Five Europe, Jazz Plays Europe Laboratory, Art Meetings, and Melting Pot Laboratory (Jazztopad). In the last two, as leader, composer, and instrumentalist, he developed the idea of open improvisation in dialogue with other art forms. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the Faculty of Instrumental Music at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz.

Dominik Wania – pianist and composer. He belongs to the elite circle of artists recording for ECM Records, and his album Lonely Shadows is the first-ever solo release by a Polish musician on this prestigious international jazz label.

Wania first gained recognition on the music scene performing alongside Tomasz Stańko, who invited him to join his ensemble immediately after the pianist completed his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. During four years of collaboration with the legendary trumpeter, Wania met his next long-term musical partner – saxophonist Maciej Obara, whose quartet he has been a member of ever since.

This ensemble, one of the most significant Polish jazz groups in recent years, enabled him to expand his artistry and launch an international career. With Obara’s quartet, he has performed in leading jazz venues and festivals worldwide and recorded six albums, the two most recent also released by ECM Records. In addition to performing and recording in numerous jazz constellations, Wania is devoted to teaching at the Academies of Music in Kraków and Katowice, and he also collaborates with Zbigniew Preisner on film music projects.

Erland Dahlen

Racoons is the fifth solo album from drummer extraordinaire Erland Dahlen. He has played on more than 300 albums with a various range of artists in different genres and he plays regularly with bands and artists like Nils Petter Molvær group, Stian Westerhus , Geir Sundstøl, Madrugada and Eivind Aarset to name a few. The new album Racoons was recorded in Oslo in March 2023, and will be his first on Is It Jazz? Records. 

The album was recorded in Rainbow Studio with Bjarte Stensli, with additional recording and mix with Jens Petter Nilsen and Hallvard W. Hagen from Xploding Plastix. Dahlen plays a lot of custom-made instruments here -Lars Hurlen has built different logdrums for this album, and Harald Hougaard has built a custom-made zither bass. Dahlen also uses custom-made chromatic blossom bells and different metal stuff like huge serving plates. 

Erland Dahlen’s solo project came from the fact that he’s played hundreds of records with other musicians over the years, and wanted to have a project where he could record and play live just by himself. Too many musical ideas that didn’t fit any other projects had accumulated over time, so he decided to use some of those in a solo project. The plan was to record just one album in 2012 (Rolling Bomber), but over time the solo project has become more and more significant.