OWN ALBUMS
This LP is published by Crossroads Centre.
It is available to purchase here: rozdroza.com/en/sklep/
Listen here on Bandcamp
This duo, Andrzej Karalow and Jérôme Noetinger, is the brainchild of Grzegorz Paluch, who had the idea of bringing together the piano, the subtle phrasing and harmonic interplay of the former with the magnetic and electronic tentacles of the latter. The piano metamorphoses in the cogs of the tape recorder, multiplying and playing with its distorted mirror. It’s a journey through imaginary landscapes haunted by a ghostly presence.
Jérôme Noetinger – Revox B77, electronics
Andrzej Karałow – piano, Roland space echo
Recorded at Andrzej Karałow’s home studio, May 2024.
Recording, mix, and mastering by Igor Szymański.
Double bassist Joëlle Léandre and pianist Andrzej Karałow and, two exceptional improvisers, introduce FLINT – an album born from raw, spontaneous expression. Like the flint it is named after, it ignites moments of warmth, intensity, and transformation. Their interplay, both subtle and explosive, allows sound to organically unfold in real time. FLINT is an open invitation to experience music at its most elemental.
The album was recorded in S4 Studio of Polish Radio in Warsaw, Poland.
Joëlle Léandre – double bass
Andrzej Karałow – piano
Igor Szymański – recording, editing, mix, master
Listen [Streaming]: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/jollelandreandrzejkaraow/flint
Link to label: http://ensemblage.pl/index.php/label/
Chamber recital with music by W. Lutosławski, G. Crumb, B. Bartók, O. Messiaen
Małgorzata Wasiucionek-Potera – violin
Andrzej Karałow – piano
The music we hear on this album, very consciously structured into a sensitive story (as evidenced by specific pieces and names), is ‘natural in its hunger’: it is simply life. When thinking about the (re)creative process of performance, we often forget that the score is a secondary record of music—it is not that music is its epilogue. Music was first, and Wasiucionek and Karałow remind us of this fact. Their performance is organic, ‘testing gravity’, as far as the virtuosity, interpretation, tone colours, and energy are concerned. However, whenever we deal with a living organism, there is, like its colourful halo, a glowing rim—the mystery of what is ‘beyond’.
Monographic album with works for mixed ensembles
Messages Quartet / proMODERN vocal sextet / Chromatophonic Trio / Agnieszka Podłucka / Chopin University Chamber Orchestra / Rafał Janiak
Inspired by the phenomenon of landscapes, I try to discover my own musical language through penetrating and fathoming visual, multi-layered sceneries. By connecting music with synesthesia, I want to reach a unique connection of sound, its colour, and time. The best link-symbol to observe the paradox of variability and permanency of landscapes is journey. Earth, physical land, tectonic layers, colours – all of these elements connect with spiritual aspect of steadiness and unpredictability. Improvisation – which is also important for me in the context of musical creation – as musical element and technique, symbolizes in my music a wandering through internal sound landscapes, merging everything into a single, organic whole.
Landscape, space, colour, sound, light, shadow – these are the elements that inspire my imagination. The complexity of landscape – often understood symbolically or abstractly – triggers many factors related to the shaping of sound material and its colour and of the sound structure itself. The phenomenon of landscape and its dynamic variability inspires me with its unpredictability and diverse layers.
TSE – Trójmiejska Scena Elektroakustyczna
Double Acts 5:
Andrzej Karałow | Katarzyna Karpowicz
Double Acts 6
Mateusz Klimek | Dariusz Mazurowski
Nagrano 17.01 i 21.02.2025 w Inaczej Niż w Raju
Miks/mastering: A. Puczyński (DA 5), D. Mazurowski (DA 6 )
Logo TSE i typografia: Katarzyna Podpora
*TSE Double Acts w Inaczej Niż w Raju to cykl spotkań muzycznych w formule improwizujących duetów, złożonych z artystów i artystek reprezentujących Trójmiejską Scenę Elektroakustyczną
* Trójmiejska Scena Elektroakustyczna (TSE) to grupa twórców i twórczyń
zajmujących się szeroko rozumianą muzyką elektroakustyczną i pokrewnymi dziedzinami, jak field recording czy instalacja dźwiękowa, rezydujących w Trójmieście i okolicach.
Andrzej Karałow – STONE MUSIC
It’s my first piano solo album dedicated to contemporary music. All of the four works are shaping a meditative atmosphere, each in its own way. “Stone Music” by Zygmunt Krauze and “Zerstreutes Hinausschauen” by Tomasz Sikorski were the underlying inspirations for works from the vinyl’s other side: “Stratum” by Żaneta Rydzewska and “There are forgotten bells above the crawling cloud” written me. Two sides of this LP album, set up like a mirror, use the sound of the piano in conventional as well as sonoristic, extended way. From reverberating sound structures, long e-bowed notes to dynamic and repetitive music as well as buzzing and lingering soundscapes created by rocking stones on piano’s strings.
Andrzej Karałow’s De invitatione mortis, set to Maciej Papierski’s poetic triptych, is a mystery play attempting to tame inexplicable phenomena such as death, transience, and fate. Karałow’s meta-opera aims to demonstrate a different approach to the opera genre by combining various stylistic and technical influences from the borders of classical, improvised, and electronic music. Sound and lyrics create a new world based on synesthetic and abstract references. It is a type of a static opera, without stage action. The libretto and its “play of light” and symbols correlate with the sound color (gradually illuminated).
The work’s form is based on three acts, each containing three poem-images presented by three protagonists: the terminally ill, the Doctor, and Death (Euthanatos). The formal arrangement draws on the traditions of ancient theater: tripartite structure, the unity of time and place, and the influence of fate. Three singer-actors are contrasted with an instrumental octet and a chamber male vocal ensemble.
The individual parts of the Sick Woman, Euthanatos, and the Physician can be interpreted ambiguously: on the one hand, as a personal manifesto of a lonely person, their cry and desire to free themselves from inevitable fate, and on the other, as an attempt to rationally grasp the ultimate.
Light, shadow, color, sound – these elements comprise the core repertoire of the Chromatophonic Trio, an ensemble formed in 2020 and the only piano trio in Poland performing contemporary music. Another key goal of the Chromatophonic Trio is to promote and develop the latest piano trio repertoire within conceptually coherent concert and publishing projects. The band members—Roksana Kwaśnikowska (violin), Agata Dobrzańska (cello), and Andrzej Karałow (piano)—are renowned musicians professionally associated with both the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music and renowned orchestras such as the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra.
“Drawn from the dictionary of visual arts, the pairs of oppositions: light and shadow, sharp and soft, warm and cold, are just some of the determinants that form the interpretive framework of this album. Its main motif is color” (Wioleta Żochowska). The album’s repertoire includes: Toshio Hosokawa’s Trio, dedicated to the band Beyond the Haze of Winter’s Edge by Welsh composer Ashley John Long; Florescence by the band’s founder and pianist Andrzej Karałow; and the exuberant Trio II (Triptych) “The Mirror With Three Faces” by Lera Auerbach. The material was recorded at the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio of Polish Radio. in Warsaw by Michał Bereza, Katarzyna Rakowiecka-Rojsza, and Ewa Guziołek-Tubelewicz.
The album Chromatophonic proves “that the classical piano trio is still an inspiring ensemble and there is still much to discover within it, especially in the field of sound color” (Wioleta Żochowska).