Vladyslav Sendecki & Atom String Quartet: LE JARDIN OUBLIÉ / MY POLISH HEART

Vladyslav Sendecki – piano

Atom String Quartet: Dawid Lubowicz – violin; Mateusz Smoczyński - violin; Michał Zaborski - viola; Krzysztof Lenczowski - cello

Vladyslav Sendecki is considered one of the most powerful and creative solo pianists of our time. "He is a long-lost descendant of Schumann, Debussy, and Grieg, a contemporary master of the small form, who elevates jazz to the rank of the 'second classical music' in music history... a master of emotion, creating poignant musical virtuosity with harmonies and changing rhythms," as described in the SZ about the pianist and composer.

"Music always means freedom to me. Freedom and the exchange of thoughts and emotions - with the audience, other musicians, the instrument, and myself," says Vladyslav Sendecki, from whom these words originate. For Sendecki, born in 1955 in Gorlice, his origin is an inseparable part of his art. Barely out of childhood, he becomes a celebrated classical pianist. At the age of fifteen, he first hears about Weather Report and Mahavishnu, whose recordings - officially frowned upon in Poland at the time - circulate on the black market. For Sendecki, this first encounter with jazz becomes a fateful key experience that determines his further path in life. With his two jazz formations, Extra Ball and Sunship, he is invited as a celebrated pianist and composer to major festivals across Europe. A challenging undertaking in the times of the Iron Curtain... In 1981, Sendecki follows his musical passion and immigrates first to Switzerland and then to Germany. Not only a courageous step towards freedom, but also a rise to the premier league of jazz – since then, he has played alongside jazz greats such as Joe Henderson, Lenny White, Marcus Miller, Randy and Michael Brecker, Jaco Pastorius, Billy Cobham, Till Brönner, and Klaus Doldinger, to name a few... Since 1996, he has also been a permanent ensemble member of the renowned NDR Big Band.
Despite all international successes, despite his connection to his adopted home of Germany, Vladyslav Sendecki cannot and will not deny his roots - neither his love for Poland nor his love for classical music. Like no other contemporary pianist and composer, he breaks through the artificial barriers between classical music and jazz! He actively implements this passion, experiencing - and living - music as a globally connecting, cross-border social and cultural asset, as the artistic director of the star Jazz Festival (October 12/13, 2018 in Hamburg).

The Atom String Quartet is arguably one of the most fascinating string quartets in the world and simultaneously one of the best Polish jazz bands.
With the instrumentation of a chamber music ensemble (Dawid Lubowicz and Mateusz Smoczyński: violins, Michał Zaborski: viola, Krzysztof Lenczowski: cello), firmly rooted in the classical music tradition, the Atom String Quartet explores new sonic and formal paths. Their music is much more than a bridge between jazz and classical music. Polish folk music, global influences from various cultures, as well as structures of contemporary music, are sources of inspiration for their distinctive new string sound.
In 2010, the four graduates of the Warsaw Frédéric Chopin Conservatory, each of them highly decorated with other ensembles, founded their Atom String Quartet and have since caused a sensation at the world's largest music festivals, won international awards, and shared the stage with luminaries such as Branford Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, Gil Goldstein, Vladyslav "Adzik" Sendecki, Mino Cinelu, Paolo Fresu, Leszek Możdżer, Lars Danielsson, Zohar Fresco, Jerzy Maksymiuk, to name just a few.

Le Jardin Oublié / My Polish Heart

"With these recordings, I want to share a deep matter of the heart with you. All my compositions on this album are influenced by very personal experiences, encounters, and/or very personal inspirations from my immediate environment. The instrumentation - piano and string quartet - belongs sonically to my absolute favorites, and the style of interpretation, each piece a tension-filled and organic blend of composition and improvisation, is my musical credo.
We want to make tangible for you the mutual inspiration that my highly esteemed fellow musicians of the Atom String Quartet and I experienced during the recordings at the Bauer Studios and during the studio concert there. Through our musical encounter, spaces have opened up - full of energetic density, sonic complexity, and lyrical expression. Spaces full of freedom.
And despite - or perhaps precisely because of - this complexity, it is simply music. For enjoyment, for joy in life - for all of us," Vladyslav Sendecki himself says about this album.
Tracks one to four and six to ten comprise the album title Le Jardin Oublié, a metaphor for the forgotten, the lost and also the longed-for - a look inward that simultaneously wanders into the past and into the future - even fragmentarily aligning with the existentialist fundamental thoughts of being and non-being.