Description
Portraits
Adam Bałdych’s Portraits are an attempt to grasp what can hardly be unambiguously explained in words but can be expressed through emotions and sounds; namely, the world around us, an image of our age and the human condition riddled with moral dilemmas, amid the constant hurry, chaos, and jitter.
In order better to understand present-day sentiments, Bałdych draws on the past: 20th-century archive documents, the testimony of composer Szymon Laks from his 1967 publication Auschwitz Games, poems and letters from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Bałdych asks questions: What is human nature like? What does happiness mean today? What does it mean to exist? How is it possible that the great and creative human sensitivity coexists with a potential for unspeakable brutality? This is a Protest – A Song Against War and a Manifesto: A Call for World Peace
In this age of constant overstimulation, any attempt to stop and reflect is like a salto mortale, a genuine feat. ‘In listening to such strains our souls undergo a change,’ claims Aristotle in his Politics. Music gives account of our emotions, whether they are in a state of turmoil or order. It is music that synchronises our feelings with those of other +people, and makes us better persons.
The Portraits project is, to me, a protest song opposing all this world, but also a coming to a halt. It is an album rooted in the past and memories passed down as in a relay race, a reflection of identity – of oneself, one’s place and country of origin; an identity that can provide a solid foundation for attempts to answer the question: Who am I?
Jacek Górecki
tracklist & samples
undoubtedly the greatest living master of jazz violin technique, of whom one can expect anything
