composers (M)

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Marcin Masecki,

pianist, composer, improviser and arranger; b. 6 September 1982 in Warsaw. He comes from a musical family - his father was a clarinetist and his grandmother - a pianist and his first teacher. He attended a secondary school of music, then received a scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston (2000), which he graduated from in 2002.

While still at secondary school, he joined Alchemik and recorded four albums with the band. At that time he also collaborated with Oxen ensemble. In 1998 he recorded the album Tribute to Marek&Wacek with Andrzej Jagodziński. The pianists got back together in a recording studio two years later while working with the Prima Vista Quartet on the album Gdzie są filmy z tamtych lat (2000) featuring new interpretations of film scores of the 1930s.

Having graduated, Masecki came back to Poland and began collaborating with such artists as Tomasz Stańko, Michał Urbaniak, or Zbigniew Wegehaupt and ensembles such as Pink Freud, Muzykoterapia and Afro Kolektyw. He started working with independent improvisers and performers associated with the Lado ABC record label. The collaboration brought about his solo album Mięso (2007) and Bob (2009). The year 2009 also saw the release of the first album of the Paristetris band, established by Masecki with is wife Candelaria Saenz Valiente and multi-instrumentalist Maciej Moretti. In 2010 the band released another album, Honey Darling, while Masecki launched the solo album John. At the same time he worked on the album Chopin, Chopin, Chopin with a sextet he founded and named Profesjonalizm. The album was published in 2011.

Marcin Masecki has won a number of prizes and distinctions. Together with Wojtek Pulcyn and Grzegorz Grzyb he received the 1st prize at Jazz Siedlce ‘97 (Poland) and the 2nd prize at Jazz Sarteano ’98 (Italy). Together with Alchemik he won the 1st prize at 1988 Jazz Hoeilaart in Brussels and the award for the festival's best soloist. In 2005 he received the 1st prize and the golden medal at the International Jazz Piano Competition in Moscow.

The artist also gives concerts of classical music, mainly European music of the 17th and 18th centuries. He frequently performs works by Ludvig van Beethoven and Domenico Scarlatti. In 2007 he began working on his interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's Kunst der Fuge, which he recorded on an old dictaphone and released as an album in 2012. The CDs released in the following years include Bach Rewrite (with Piotr Orzechowski; Decca 2013), Scarlatti (Fortune, 2013), Polonaises (Lado ABC, 2013), El pueblo unido jamás será vencido (Bôłt Records, 2014) and Beethoven: Last Piano Sonatas (Lado ABC, 2015). In 2016, together with cellist Tomasz Pokrzywiński, he initiated the summer festival "Transcriptions", which presented Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies in various arrangements.

updated: December 2016 (ab)