Marcus+

Versatility and imagination. Two characteristics that no person writing about him ever fails to mention. Of course, neither of these makes the job of defining his music genre any easier. Then again, he is not very much into defining himself – he prefers developing, the more directions the better.

Leszek Możdżer

A world-class pianist and one of the greatest Polish jazz musicians ever. Last year the star of his own extraordinary show, Leszek will yet again honour Solidarity of Arts  this August as one of Marcus Miller's special guests.

He is a graduate of the Academy of Music in his hometown Gdańsk. Initially he played with Miłość (1991-97) and with the Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet (1992-95), but already in the mid-90s he began recording under his own name. Today his discography takes up a separate Wikipedia page – independent from the article about the artist himself.

Leszek Możdżer has already won a bundle of Poland’s most prestigious awards, including a Fryderyk (jazz musician of the year 1998), the Paszport of the Polityka weekly (2004), the Grand Prize of the Foundation for Culture (2005) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Award for promoting Polish culture abroad (2007). For the past 17 (!) years he has held the Pianist of the Year title awarded by the readers of the Jazz Forum magazine. He frequently mentions Lester Bowie, Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Preisner and Adam Makowicz as his musical role models. His 2004 performances with Makowicz at Carnegie Hall were at the time dubbed “the high point of the Polish jazz piano history.” Możdżer recorded with Janusz Muniak, Michał Urbaniak, Piotr Wojtasik, Adam Pierończyk, Henryk Miśkiewicz and Anna Maria Jopek. He is an old partner in crime of Jan Kaczmarek, a Polish composer working with 20th Century Fox and Miramax. They teamed up to write the score for the Academy Award winning film Finding Neverland (2004).

Leszek Możdżer is known for inviting word-class musicians to work with him. He humbly explains, that his main motivation for doing that is to learn from them. Both of the two excellent albums (The Time, 2005, and Between Us And The Light, 2006), recorded by his Możdżer – Danielsson – Fresco trio, went double platinum – the latter only two weeks after its release. 

Leszek Możdżer has already performed in nearly every European country, in the United States, Canada, South America (including a concert in Chile with 15,000 people in attendance), as well as China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. One may be tempted to think that there is nothing Leszek Możdżer has not yet tried and accomplished as an artist. Still, last year's Możdżer+ (he was not only its main actor, but also its musical director) was pretty special. It brought him a string of awards, including Jazz Forum's Event of 2010 and Gazeta Wyborcza's (Polish biggest daily newspaper) Storm of the Year (Best Event of 2010). Leszek also took out RMF Classic's MocArt award (Man of the Year).  
Final word: Leszek's latest solo album Komeda (2011) is an absolute masterpiece. We can only hope that Marcus Miller incorporates some of its material into this year's Marcus+.
mozdzer.com

Photo: Kamil Gozdan