On the initiative of Elwira Fibiger, honorary president of the Association of Polish Piano Tuners, a concert by Adam Makowicz will be held on September 20.
Adam Makowicz - a jazz legend, master of improvisation and outstanding pianist - will perform together with the Symphony Orchestra of the Kalisz Philharmonic, conducted by Ruben Silva. In the second part of the concert we will enjoy a solo recital by a great figure of Polish and world jazz - the program will include American standards and the pianist's own compositions.
Adam Makowicz will perform playing the 1938 Arnold Fibiger M-280 concert grand piano. This is the largest Polish concert grand piano (280 cm), constructed in 1938 by 26-year-old Gustav Arnold Fibiger III. Only 11 pieces of this instrument were built until the outbreak of World War II. The restoration of this piano was carried out in 2022 during the Fibiger Family Year celebrations. Currently, the Arnold Fibiger M-280 piano is used by the Kalisz Philharmonic Orchestra.
This is not Adam Makowicz's first concert on this piano. On May 22 this year, during a special event at the Sejm, Adam Makowicz played a short recital on an Arnold Fibiger M-280 piano.
IPodod During the concert the following works will be played:
Adam Makowicz - Composition No. 20 (Sopot 100)
Adam Makowicz - Early June In Central Park
Fryderyk Chopin - Prelude No. 4
Fryderyk Chopin - Prelude No . 7
Adam Makowicz - Sunset Over The Hudson
Adam Makowicz - Living High In Manhattan
Adam Makowicz
Born in 1940 in the Czech Republic to a Polish family then living in Cieszyn Silesia. In 1946, with his parents, he returned to Poland. The choice fell on Rybnik, where Adam's father found work in a mine as a mining machinery engineer. Already in Rybnik, Adam's first piano lessons were given by his mother, also a pianist and singer. Young Adam turned out to be particularly talented, so he was sent to a school for musically gifted children, and then to the Rybnik piano class of prominent pedagogue Professor Karol Szafranek. Although his parents dreamed for their son of a career as a classical pianist, 15-year-old Adam was nevertheless taken by jazz, which he learned by listening to the "Music USA-Jazz Hour" radio program of legendary jazz music popularizer Willis Conover.
In the late 1950s in Poland, jazz music was the unwelcome and even forbidden fruit of the West. This music (as Adam once said, "a world of freedom and improvisation"), especially as performed by piano masters such as Art Tatum and Erroll Garner, fascinated him to such an extent that as a teenager he abandoned school and its classical requirements and rules.
In search of the beginnings of his own artistic path and the language of musical expression, Adam, unable to count on further help from his parents, chose an extremely modest existence under conditions of constant uncertainty of survival of the next day. His oasis at the time became the Cracow jazz club "Helicon". A few years later in 1962, together with trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, he founded the "Jazz Darings" group, considered the first European free jazz combo. For many years he graced the then legendary Warsaw Jazz Jamboree festivals with his music. Since the mid-1970s, Adam increasingly played solo concerts gaining fame and recognition among music lovers in Poland and around the world.
In 1977, on the recommendation of Benny Goodman and Willis Conover, legendary producer John Hammond invited him for a 10-week US tour. During this time Makowicz recorded a solo album for CBS Columbia entitled "Adam." In 1978 he went to the US for the second time, this time for a 6-month contract, and since then New York, Manhattan, became his permanent home. The legendary temples of music opened up to him - New York's Carnegie Hall (he first performed there in a concert dedicated to Erroll Garner, who had died six months earlier) and the Cookery Club in Greenwich Village. He was invited to participate in the Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island.
After martial law was imposed in Poland in 1981, along with other Polish artists living in the United States, Adam took part in a televised program broadcast around the world, organized at the initiative of President Ronald Reagan, "To Make Poland Polish," which definitively closed off the possibility of him coming to the country for several long years. It was only after 1989 that he was finally able to visit Poland, where he now comes to regulate. While performing in the US, Adam shared the stage with some of the greatest and greatest musicians, including Benny Goodman, Herbie Hancock, Earl Hines, Freddie Hubbard, Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson, George Shearing, George Mraz, Al Foster, Jacki DeJohnette, Charlie Haden.
A duet performance with Leszek Możdżer at Carnegie Hall in September 2004 was highly praised by reviewers. The concert - a "duel" between a veteran master and a rising jazz star - was recorded on CD and DVD. The recording was honored with a "Platinum Record" by the EMI Music label. In addition to purely jazz pieces, he also has classical music in his repertoire, especially Chopin, which he "soaked up" in his youth, as he says, and which he feels "jazz-wise" like no one else. In the US, Adam has released a CD devoted to Chopin's music in jazz interpretation, the only American CD of its kind entirely devoted to this brilliant composer. Adam's extraordinarily broad repertoire also includes works by G. Gershwin, I. Berlin, J. Kern, C. Porter and many other American composers. He has recorded dozens of albums and performed in the most important concert halls in the world, collaborating with the greatest contemporary musicians. He has written compositions for chamber ensembles, more than 100 short jazz compositions, as well as music for short films.
He was awarded many civilian honors, including the Commander's Cross of Merit in 2005. In 2008, on the occasion of the four hundredth anniversary of the American Polish community, he was counted among the honorable group of the most distinguished Poles in the history of the United States. In October 2009, Adam was decorated in Warsaw with the Golden Cross "Gloria Artis" - the highest state decoration for his merits in promoting Polish art around the world. In 2012, the Society of Friends of Silesia in Warsaw awarded Adam its annual award for people of particular merit to Silesia. For more than a dozen years, Adam, an Honorary Citizen of Ustroń, has dedicated his annual autumn recital in Ustroń to a charitable cause, supporting the Educational and Rehabilitation Center in Ustroń-Nierodzim with this gesture. In the fall of 2011, the PWM Edition publishing house published Mark Strasza's book "Playing the First Piano. Conversations with Adam Makowicz", in which Adam extraordinarily vividly and frankly talks about his difficult beginnings, his love for jazz and his career overseas. The second edition of this widely read book was published in 2015. In the same year, his hometown of Rybnik awarded him the honorary title of Honorary Citizen of the City of Rybnik, and in March 2018 ZAiKS Honorary Membership. Also in March 2018 there was the premiere of the album "Swinging Ivories", which recorded his recital at the W. Lutoslawski Concert Studio of the Polish Public Radio in Warsaw. Its vinyl version was released in February 2019. In 2019, for his merits in spreading Polish culture abroad, Adam Makowicz was honored by the Polish Intelligentsia Club in Vienna with the Golden Owl Award of the Polish Diaspora, known as the "Polonia Oscar."
Since 2012, Adam has been working and touring closely in the States, Canada, and most recently in Poland, with New York-based Polish-born saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna. In 2019, the two men expanded their ensemble with the addition of young American double bassist Jeff Dingler. The premiere performance of their trio, the MMD Jazz Ensemble, took place on June 3, 2019 at New York's legendary Blue Note club.
In 2020, together with Leszek Możdżer, he prepared a new program currently presented with great success on the biggest Polish concert stages. In 2020, the Jazz Association Melomani awarded Adam Makowicz two awards: Grand Prix of Europe and Grand Prix for Lifetime Achievement. In 2021 he was awarded the Golden Fryderyk Lifetime Achievement Award, and in November 2022 the Academy of Art in Szczecin awarded him an "honorary doctorate." In 2023, the premieres of Adam's two latest albums took place: "Welcome Back, Adam" recorded for ForTune (CD), and "Blue Sapphires" recorded for AC Records (vinyl).
