JAZZ IN POLISH: Lean Suite

Leśnian Suite is a new original project by Kuba Banaszek — a pianist, composer and improviser working on the border of contemporary jazz, improvised music and popular music. The starting point for the creation of the suite was the poetry of Bolesław Lesmian — one of the most original poets and prose writers of Polish literature of the 20th century.

The project presents a series of vocal and instrumental compositions based on selected poems by Bolesław Lesmian. The pieces form a dramatically-coherent form — a suite in which word and sound remain in constant dialogue. Music is not an illustration of the text, but its development, reinterpretation and response to the content: it operates with space, tension and improvisation, building an emotional landscape around Lesmianowski's metaphysics, sensuality and mystery.

Leśnian Suite is an attempt at contemporary reading of classical poetry through the language of improvised music — a project rooted in tradition and open to new forms of expression.