This year’s Enter Enea Festival is full of world premieres and special projects. The 13th edition of this unique jazz festival, directed by Leszek Możdżer, will be held in Poznań between 4 and 7 June 2023. The event is sponsored by the Enea Group, who has been its patron for nine consecutive years.
Enter Enea Festival is a four-day outdoor meeting with music in the settings of Poznań’s Strzeszyńskie Lake. As always, the programme has been carefully selected by Leszek Możdżer, who has been the artistic director of the event since its inception. The Festival combines unpretentiousness, independence and the casual ambience of outdoor events with an air of exclusivity and superior artistic experience promised by the line-up of artists invited by Możdżer. In addition to musical sensations, the organisers are also planning to unveil at Lake Strzeszyńskie a new installation by Professor Izabella Gustowska titled …siała Baba mak…, which will add to the permanent exhibition of the Poznań Visual Park. As usual, Enter will host many premieres and introduce new musical constellations, filling the programme to the brim.
4 June – Supported by the Poznań City Hall and the Enea Group, the first Festival day will open with two surprise concerts awaiting both beachgoers leaving their spots in the sun and guests seeking an attractive artistic programme on Sunday night. The concerts will begin at 6 p.m. …siała Baba mak… at the Poznań Visual Park
The highlight of the evening on 4 June is the launch of …siała Baba mak…, a new installation by Professor Izabella Gustowska at the Poznań Visual Park, an openair park of artistic objects curated by Katarzyna Jankowiak-Gumna and managed by the ABC Gallery in cooperation with Fundacja Europejskie Forum Sztuki.
An eight-metre poppy head growing out of a designed field of red poppies forms a kind of detached Lemnos Island at Strzeszyńskie. When we approach it, additional sensors, independent from the solar battery, will light up the poppy head and we will hear the folk song about the strong Baba (old woman) sowing poppy seeds, says Professor Gustowska about the installation.
At 8:30 p.m., the Festival will begin with a dancing parade of singing Babas led by multi-instrumentalist and singer Malwina Paszek accompanied by a choir. After sunset, Memory, an exhibition by Professor Gustowska will open at the ABC Gallery, curated by Jagna Domżalska.
On 5 June, Dhafer Youssef, who is touring his album Street of Minarets, will open the night with the Polish live premiere of the record.
The topic of the album is first and foremost about traveling, shares Dhafer. After traveling to the four corners of the world, in search of new sounds, here I sing differently and use vocal effects that I grew up with. Particularly the sound effect of megaphones for the call to prayer – hence the record title, “Street of Minarets.” He continues, This record is a journey through time with a bridge sitting between the child I was, a music lover and admirer of the great masters like Miles, Herbie, and Dave, and the grown-up individual I have become. A bridge between the jazz of the 50s and its rockier version of the 80s too. I wanted to show that I am a musician in perpetual motion, avoiding being labeled as kitsch or exotic.
The second show on Monday is the Jazz Forum Machine comprising Kasia Pietrzko, Maciej Kądziela, Jakub Mizeracki, Tomasz Chyła, Kacper Smoliński, Roman Chraniuk and Adam Zagórski. All are established musicians and holders of numerous international and Polish awards. They are also winners of annual reader and critic surveys conducted by the JAZZ FORUM magazine, individually or with their original groups. Beware, the top brass of Polish jazz. The new is coming, warns Andrzej Zieliński, music journalist of the Polish Radio Programme 2.
This year, one of the highlights of the Enter Enea Festival is the premiere of a new album by Leszek Możdżer and Orchestra Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense of the Warsaw Chamber Opera (MACV) titled Composites. The presented material features six pieces, four of which (Compositum I, II, III, IV) are not compositions but composites that are a masterful combination of compositions and improvisations. The piano parts were improvised by Możdżer, who also wrote an orchestra score to match them. The remaining two pieces, Ballad For Lars, dedicated to the Swedish double bassist Lars Danielsson, and the lyrical Natalladia, were composed by Możdżer in the classical way. The music will be performed by the orchestra, featuring percussionist Patrycja Betlej. The concert will be conducted by maestro Marcin Sompoliński.
Patrycja Betley is a very expressive artist, endowed with unique imagination. In addition to great pulsation and multicolour, her playing manifests that overpowering feminine delicacy, that gives the sound a kind of elusive softness, making the music pour more effortlessly into the hearts of listeners. And, as a pianist, I am also a listener of what we play, says Możdżer
Composites was commissioned by the Warsaw Chamber Opera which, specially for the Enter Enea Festival, is making a special edition of the album in a collector’s limited numbered box (500 copies) comprising a coloured vinyl, a tape recording and a booklet. Each box will also contain a certificate with Leszk Możdżer’s autograph. The album will be available in pre-sale exclusively during the Enter Enea Festival and on the Warsaw Chamber Orchestra website.
The Tuesday programme (6 June) will begin with a concert for two pianos, Makowicz vs. Możdżer. Adam Makowicz is undoubtedly an iconic figure in Polish jazz pianism. Możdżer received his first Makowicz album when he was eight years old, and this set him off on his adventure with jazz. Who would have thought that twenty-five years later he would record an album with his master? And in New York’s Carnegie Hall, too. The artists differ in many ways: their approach to swing, their harmonic language, their sound aesthetics, phrasing, anatomy of style, repertoire…This combination would have seemed impossible, were it not for some similarities built on certain decisive, subtle consistencies: their love of music, persistence in forging their own pianistic language, respect for musical tradition and determination in pursuit of a world based on imaginary perfection. The pianists first met in 2005, and since then the concerts of the Makowicz – Możdżer duo have ceased to be a confrontation between two piano stars. They have become an artistic emanation of mature subtlety and unforced artistry covered in an elusive masterly patina with the attributes of a deep human relationship between the two remarkable artists.
Also on Tuesday, 6 June, Cécile McLorin Salvant will perform Mélusine in her first Polish concert, which is part of her world promo tour. The American singer and composer of Haitian origin, a three-time Grammy Award winner, is considered the best vocalist on the jazz scene today. McLorin Salvant is a multi-artist: a composer, lyricist and singer, who also expresses herself through visual art. Classically trained, steeped in jazz, blues and folk, and drawing from musical theatre and vaudeville, Salvant displays amazing musical skills, as well as almost theatrical means of expression that make her concerts unforgettable.
The highlight of 6 June will be the premiere of compositions commissioned by the Festival and dedicated to the Strzeszyńskie Lake, authored by Rafał Zapała.
A unique aspect of the Enter Enea Festival is its natural surroundings, the closeness of the lake. In my project, THE LAKE HAS A MASTER PLAN (pharoah sanders tribute) I want to involve the acoustic characteristics of this exceptional situation. I intend to use the tools of ecological musical culture from the range of field recording, aiming to “amplify” the lake and use it as a sound layer for the concert, says Rafał Zapała.
Zapała ignores the boundaries between the music he learnt academically, his musical countercultural experience and his collaborations with artists from other fields. His music features at contemporary music festivals, in jazz clubs, in experimental music venues and in open urban space. His work also holds a special place for urban site-specific sound projects and installations, for example Sensorium (a monumental installation on the clock tower CK ZAMEK in Poznań) and Post Apocalypsis (which received a gold medal for the „Sound Design” of the Polish Pavilion at the Prague Quadrennial in 2015). Created for the settings of the Strzeszyńskie Lake, his latest composition will continue this collection.
The programme on Wednesday, 7 June will begin with the concert of Gloria Campaner. After a fantastic reception of her concert with Leszek Możdżer (released also as a concert album), she returns to Poznań with her trio. The artists she has invited to perform with her at the Enter Enea Festival are outstanding Italian instrumentalists: clarinettist Alessandro Carbonare and bandoneonist Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi, with whom she will play the concert Astor.
A much anticipated event of this year’s Enter Enea Festival is the performance of the Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski Quartet. The legend of the Polish jazz scene, a brilliant saxophonist, composer, arranger, conductor, leader, teacher and renowned journalist, Ptaszyn Wróblewski has been contributing to the history of Polish jazz for nearly 70 years. The renowned musician has invited Leszek Możdżer to take part in the concert.
The final event of the Festival programme will be the first Polish concert of the Connie Han Trio. As we can read in an American press release, the pianist and composer speaks in the voice of an ancient goddess of love, beauty and war on her new album Secrets of Inanna. The record largely draws inspiration from The Descent of Inanna, an ancient Sumerian epic detailing the goddess’s journey into the underworld from her domain in heaven. Along the way she must confront her older sister Ereshkigal, the Dark Queen of the Underworld, and thereby her own inner darkness. The goddess is killed and reborn as the Morning Star, eventually to be echoed in later tales of Venus, Ishtar and Aphrodite. Han created and wrote the music for the album in collaboration with her long-time producer and drummer, Bill Wysaske. The recording and improvisation sessions also included John Patitucci.
The Festival is organised by Fundacja Europejskie Forum Sztuki, chaired and founded by Jerzy Gumny. The titular sponsor of the Enter Enea Festival is the Enea Group. The Festival is supported by the Poznań City Hall and the Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region.
PROGRAMME
4 June | Sunday
6 p.m. concerts (the line-up will be known in June)
x the Enter Enea Festival stage
8:30 p.m. Izabella Gustowska x Poznań Visual Park
…SIAŁA BABA MAK…
Chór Pogłosy conducted by Joanna Sykulska, feat. Malwina Paszek
9 p.m. Izabella Gustowska x ABC Gallery
MEMORY
5 June | Monday
7:30 p.m. Dhafer Youssef
STREETS OF MINARETS – promo tour
9 p.m. Jazz Forum Machine
10:30 p.m. Leszek Możdżer & Orchestra Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense of the Warsaw Chamber Opera conducted by Marcin Sompoliński, feat. Patrycja Betley
COMPOSITES – concert premiere
6 July | Tuesday
7:30 p.m. Makowicz vs. Możdżer
9 p.m. Cécile McLorin Salvant
MÉLUSINE – promo tour
10:30 p.m. Rafał Zapała
THE LAKE HAS A MASTER PLAN (pharoah sanders tribute) – premiere
7 June | Wednesday
7:30 p.m. Gloria Campaner, Alessandro Carbonare, Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi
ASTOR
9 p.m. Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski Trio feat. Leszek Możdżer
10:30 p.m. Connie Han Trio
For more info and tickets visit the official website of the festival.