Jazzing up the mazurka with Artur Dutkiewicz

Jazz pianist Artur Dutkiewicz

Polish jazz pianist Artur Dutkiewicz brought his own brand of jazz to the Philippine shores through a series of performances and an improvisation workshop during a recent visit in the country.

The highlight of his trip was a solo piano concert held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. At the concert, billed as Impromazurka, Dutkiewicz, known as the "Ambassador of Polish Jazz", was at his element jazzing up not just classical music but the Polish folk dance mazurka.

Artur Dutkiewicz and
Embassy of Poland's Chargé d'affaires
Jaroslaw Szczepankiewicz

Dutkiewicz gave new life to the popular second movement theme of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World", Op. 95, B. 178 and Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Nocturne in B flat major, Op. 16 No. 4 and Minuet in G, Op. 14, No. 1. After the opening measures that established these pieces, he then jazzed up the chords and developed these themes through jazz improvisations taking the audience to a ride of different moods and vibes before settling back to the piece's familiar arrangements.

Artur Dutkiewicz

This was the same when he performed his own compositions of mazurkas, a Polish folk dance in triple meter with the accent uncharacteristically falling on the second or third beat, fused with rhythms from various places that he has traveled to.

Jaroslaw Szczepankiewicz and Artur Dutkiewicz

Speaking of travels, the concert also marked the Philippine premiere of Alexander Tansman's Les Iles Philippines, the sixth piece of Le Tour du Monde en Miniature. It was written in 1933 by Tansman after a concert world tour that included the Philippines in the early 1930s. The piece characterized by idyllic folk themes recalled Tansman's impression of the country while he was here. Dutkiewicz's performance of this piece at the concert had him expanding the work with his signature jazz improv touches. 

With a program that was made up of mostly Dutkiewicz's work and improvisations, it was not easy to figure out the character of the pieces especially when he segued from one to another further blurring the lines. By the second half, I decided just to get myself lost to the music and allowed myself to be brought to whatever place his music took me.

Dutkiewicz's concert and subsequent workshop not only brought the Polish jazz to the Philippine shores but also reintroduced Poland to the country through the Embassy of Poland headed by Jarosław Szczepankiewicz.