Piotr Damasiewicz – composer, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, traveller and curator of international music platforms. In addition to the trumpet, he also studied double bass, piano and classical singing – including Gregorian chant – choral and chamber conducting, arrangement and composition. In his work, he uses the language of jazz, 20th-century classical music, ethnic music, modern music, along with European improvised music and experiment.
Damasiewicz has represented Poland on four international music platforms: Take Five Europe, Jazz Plays Europe Laboratory, Art Meetings and Melting Pot Laboratory (Jazztopad). In the last two, as a leader, composer and instrumentalist, he developed the idea of open improvisation in contact with other fields of art. Currently, he is taking a doctor’s degree at the Instrumental Department of Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz.
the journey and people
For over a decade, Damasiewicz has been in a constant journey, musical, among others. One could say he is characterized by being in perpetual motion.
He visits various places, spaces and cultures. There – he creates by generating various sound connections.
One of the most important activities that he focuses on, as he describes it, is simultaneously travelling deep into himself and into the sound. In 2019, as a pilgrim-musician, he travelled 4,186 km on foot from the Ukrainian border to Santiago de Compostela. During the six-month journey, he made over 100 recordings of his solo impressions in various sacred spaces, where he examined their acoustic characteristics. A year earlier, together with his partner Agnieszka Kabath, he lived and recorded his improvisations in an old chapel in Vin Sur Caramy in Provence, where he immersed himself in prayer and meditation with sound, recording several dozen hours of music. Curious to learn, during his journey he interacts with interesting people, sometimes outstanding musical individuals. These informal, spontaneous meetings generate unique amalgamations and understanding at a deep level. One of the most important in his life is the visit to the double bass player Barry Phillips, with whom he spent time talking and making music together. Similar events were visits to the home of Antoin Rooney in New York, or the home of the drummer Ngom Babu Herim in Zanzibar. Face-to-face meetings with the masters are key moments in the development of his musical personality.
Travelling all over the world, he reacts to situations and places with which he interacts with sound, often experimenting with acoustics, objects and instruments. He has made musical trips to Africa, Asia, North America and a large part of Europe, including residences significant for the artist in the Faroe Islands, Ukraine, Serbia, Switzerland and Portugal, where he had the opportunity to deeply confront the local creative environments, co-creating or participating in various projects and music meetings.
