Kuba Sokołowski – piano
Szymon Nidzworski – soprano & tenor saxophone
Patryk Dobosz – drums
Mateusz Dobosz – double-bass
Special Guests:
Maciej Obara – alto saxophone
Tomasz Dąbrowski – trumpet

The magnolia is a wild, uncanny plant. Man has learnt to cultivate it, but it blooms most beautifully when left unattended. Perhaps that is how the Magnolia Acoustic Quartethas come to blossom, even though the laments of New Orleans jazz bands inspired its name rather than delight in botany. The quartet sprouted somewhere between Cracow and Warsaw as a hybrid of musical craft and free expression, tradition and a glance into the future. It’s coming into existence was duly recognized and appreciated: Taking second place in the famed Jazz Juniors 2009 Competition led up to a debut album financed by grants from The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music and Société Générale.

On the one hand, Magnolia Acoustic Quartet’s music resounds with echoes of jazz from its most glorious era, when Andrew Hill, Sam Rivers, or Eric Dolphy were creating. On the other hand, it embraces the most contemporary jazz idiom which marries the M-Base ferment of the 1990’s with a breeze of Scandinavian sensibility that surged a decade later. An attentive look at modern music is blended with an awareness of decades-long meandering of “the third current”, the strengths and weaknesses of which are well understood by the musicians. All of this is tucked away in here, alongside an unswerving certainty that whatever is essential in music, comes to pass in compositional frameworks which accommodate improvisation. (Maciej Karłowski)