Our next jazz music concert in the cycle titled JAZZ AT THE VILLA will be held on Saturday 22nd April at 8 p.m.
The stars of this spring concert are the highly regarded Szczecin-based singer Jola Szczepaniak and legendary Polish jazz pianist Andrzej Jagodziński.
The event’s partner:
small great music
Bios
Jolanta Szczepaniak
This versatile artist has for many years continued to delight the audiences with her splendid vocal abilities, intriguing arrangements, and original compositions.
Szczepaniak graduated in choral conducting from the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań. As a Batory Foundation scholarship holder, she studied improvisation and jazz singing with Donna McElroy and Bob Stoloff as well as arranging and instrumentation with Richard Evans at the famous Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
She has performed with such artists as Newman Taylor Baker, Piotr Baron, John Betsch, Jacob Collier, Anna Gadt, Krzysztof Herdzin, Kazimierz Jonkisz, Michał Kulenty, Dennis Montgomery, Paulina Przybysz, Christopher Reuter, Mieczysław Szcześniak, Janusz Szrom, Piotr Wojtasik, and Zbigniew Wrombel.
As a soloist she has sung with, among others, the Sinfonia Varsovia, Szczecin and Rzeszów Philharmonic Orchestras, NFM National Forum of Music in Wrocław, the ensembles of the Słowacki Theatre in Cracow and the Grand Theatre in Poznań. She has taken part in numerous music projects and recordings (16 albums, including her solo debut as a singer – Babagada, 2010). She has frequently appeared at such festivals as Szczecin’s Pomeranian Jazz Autumn and MeBa, the Song of Songs in Toruń, as well as Plus Jazz Festival.
Andrzej Jagodziński
A Polish jazz icon and highly regarded jazz pianist, hailed as a perfectionist keyboard virtuoso. He studied French horn and also plays the accordion. Jagodziński is an eminent composer, arranger, and educator.
He has played in stylistically very different line-ups, invariably with elite Polish musicians. Graduate of the Chopin Academy (now University) of Music in Warsaw, he has performed with, among others, Henryk Majewski’s Old Timers and Swing Session, Janusz Muniak Quartet, Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet, Big Warsaw Band, Prowizorka Dżez Będ, String Connection, Quintessence, Tomasz Szukalski Quartet, Jarosław Śmietana’s Polish All Stars, and Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski’s Czwartet. Since 1987 he has been the permanent accompanist to singer Ewa Bem.
Acclaimed on all continents, Jagodziński has appeared at such prestigious festivals as Jazz Yatra in Bombay, Ost-West in Nuremberg, Jazz in Europe (Paris), Skane Festivalen in Malmö, the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Istanbul International Festival, the Ankara Music Festival, Leverkusener Jazz Tage, as well as all the leading jazz events in Poland.
The Andrzej Jagodziński Trio, which he formed with drummer Czesław Bartkowski and bassist Adam Cegielski, presents varied projects which include concerts of Polish jazz music in arrangements for classical string orchestra and featuring Polish artists: Grażyna Auguścik, Jadwiga Kotnowska, and Henryk Miśkiewicz.
The trio’s multi-award album Chopin, comprising jazz arrangements of music by Fryderyk Chopin, won, among others, the 1994 Fryderyk Award of the Polish music record industry and the Grand Prix Melomani ’94 awarded by the Łódź Music Lovers’ Society. Their next release, Chopin Once More, became a Golden Disc in 2000. This year, Jagodziński’s Requiem has been nominated for the 2023 Fryderyk Awards in the category of ‘Jazz Album of the Year’.
