Ilona Damięcka Trio – Hope – Soliton at jazz.pl

“Beautiful, talented, sensitive, with a warm vocal tone” – this is how enthusiasts of Ilona Damięcka’s talent describe the pianist and vocalist. Add to that the fact that she is a versatile pianist, an intriguing composer, and a jazz vocalist, and you have a perfect balance of compliments that also reflect her artistic achievements. With Hope – an album recorded in the conventional trio format – Ilona Damięcka invites listeners into the world of subtle moods of modern jazz. She plays “her jazz” with sounds that bring her music closer to the best jazz traditions, to the piano conventions of Marian McPartland, Mary Lou Williams, Patricia Barber, or Lynne Arriale. This comparison is quite fitting, as Damięcka’s pianism moves away from the recent trend of Scandinavian jazz and embraces refined, melodic compositions played with grace, the emotion of melancholic textures, and delicate yet sophisticated improvisations.

Ilona Damięcka is an outstanding jazz pianist, vocalist, and composer, a graduate of the Jazz and Pop Music Department at the Academy of Music in Katowice (where she studied jazz piano under Professor Wojciech Niedziela). She is a laureate of the Krzysztof Komeda Composers’ Competition in Słupsk (1999) and has collaborated with such renowned musicians as Janusz Muniak, Andrzej Cudzich, Maciej Sikała, Piotr Wojtasik, Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski, Jerzy Małek, Henryk Miśkiewicz, Marcin Pospieszalski, Przemek Dyakowski, Ewa Uryga, Natalia Niemen, Mieczysław Szcześniak, Eric Allen, Francesca Bertazzo Hart, Helga Plankensteiner, Tomasz Licak, and many others. Her debut album Hurry Upwas recorded with outstanding musicians (Jerzy Małek, Darek Herbasz, Adam Żuchowski, Tomasz Sowiński). The album Fifth Side – Live in Radio Gdańsk is an international project she co-created with Francesca Bertazzo Hart, Helga Plankensteiner, Beppe Pilotto, and Marcin Jahrem. Her third album Monk’s Midnight, featuring compositions by Thelonious Monk, is a vocal-instrumental project with Francesca Bertazzo Hart, Paweł Urowski, and Eric Allen. Another well-received project, Pieśni Polskie (Polish Songs), was a collaboration with saxophonist Tomasz Licak, featuring Michał Jan Ciesielski, Paweł Grzesiuk, and Adam Golicki.

Hope is her fifth album and a particularly significant, self-authored work. For this project, she invited accomplished musicians (Paweł Urowski on double bass and Krzysztof Szmańda on drums) who, in line with her concept of subtle and precise jazz, create the mood of the entire session. The pianist evokes intriguing emotions and sounds, with the final track “Ten Four” possibly hinting at the next – likely vocal – album from Ilona Damięcka.

Dionizy Piątkowski