Jazz pianist BRAD MEHLDAU has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio (recently re-packaged and re-released as a 5-Disc box set by Nonesuch in late 2011). During that same period, Mehldau also released a solo piano recording entitled Elegiac Cycle, and a record called Places that included both solo piano and trio songs. Elegiac Cycle and Places might be called “concept” albums made up exclusively of original material with central themes that hover over the compositions. Other Mehldau recordings include Largo, a collaborative effort with the innovative musician and producer Jon Brion, and Anything Goes—a trio outing with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy.

Janusz Prusinowski Kompania (formerly: Janusz Prusinowski Trio) is a group of musicians who follow in traditions of village masters they have learned from: Jan Lewandowski, Kazimierz Meto, Józef Zaraś, Piotr and Jan Gaca, Tadeusz Kubiak and many others – but they are also an avant-garde band with their own characteristic sound and language of improvisation. They combine music with dance and the archaic with the modern.

The Kompania’s unique style is the result of their attempt to find new ways of interpreting the most important elements of village music from central Poland. It brings together mazurkas – sung, played, danced to, improvised live – and modern man. What new quality can be given to archaic and seemingly simple melodies and rhythms without resorting to trendy sample mixing? It turns out that traditional music of Polish villages can be a reference point for a variety of genres: reminiscent of Chopin in its melodic pattern and the use of rubato, sharing a love of improvisation with blues and jazz, evocative of contemporary music in its tone, and possessing the expressiveness of rock music.

Between 2008 and 2012 the band performed in most of European countries, Asia, Canada, the USA (including Carnegie Hall and Chicago Symphony Center) – and of course Poland. Besides playing concerts with traditional Polish music the band prepared a special programme of performances “The village roots of Frédéric Chopin’s music” with pianist Janusz Olejniczak. In 2012 Kompania begun a unique project "Kujawy” with three masters of Polish music: Tadeusz Kubiak, Tomasz Stańko, Janusz Olejniczak, and a group of singers led by Ewa Grochowska.The group also performed with Michał Urbaniak, Artur Dutkiewicz and Alim Qasimov. Apart of concerts, Kompania’s music can be heard at the parties of village and urban Dance Clubs or theatrical performances at the Polish National Theatre and the Polish Radio Theatre. They also run musical and dance workshops. In 2008 the band released “Mazurkas”, an album which received rave reviews. This was followed in 2010 by their second album “Heart”. 

In October 2012 Janusz Prusinowski Kompania performed at the prestigious world music fair – WOMEX 2012 in Thessaloniki. In 2013 they spent a full month in USA with close to 30 concerts, and having seduced American audience with mazurek, they reached for Germany, France, Benelux, Great Britain, Croatia and a couple of other countries, everywhere leaving dedicated lovers of wild Polish melodies behind. They’ve also returned to Womex (Cardiff 2013) with the „Wild Music of the Heart of Poland” project, created to present Polish traditional music to the international audience. In 2014 Kompania is involved in various events of Oskar Kolberg’s Year. Currently promoting also their new album, named - and putting the listener - "Knee-deep in Heaven”. 

At present the band members include:

Janusz Prusinowski – fiddle, voice, dulcimer, Polish accordion 
Piotr Piszczatowski – baraban drum, frame drum
Michał Żak – wooden flutes, shawm, clarinet
Piotr Zgorzelski – folk bass, dancing
Szczepan Pospieszalski – trumpet
 

"I learned my first kujawiak from my father. After that it was blues and the electric guitar, and then in an Andrzej Bieńkowski film I heard the Józef Kędzierski band. It was a revelation: the authenticity, intensity and ease that I had been looking for throughout the world existed right here, beside me – in my own language and the musical phrases belonging to it. I started visiting village musicians and became fascinated with mazureks, getting to know a whole world around them. It turned out that almost every musician puts his fingers in different places, which means playing different sounds, in different scales. Of course there are lines and schools of musicians, but human life is long enough for a unique style to evolve, especially if someone plays at three weddings per week".
Janusz Prusinowski

Instr.: Gesang, Akkordeon, Daul, Bock
Bands: Dittl&Filsner, Dittl&Brehm, Schukker Trio, Solo

www.dittlmusik.de

Bernd Dittl is following