Koszalin BassFest! Ludwik Sarski Orchestra + Confusion Project

The finale of the festival in two episodes. First, the Ludwik Sarski Orchestra — winner of the Minister of Culture Award, a collective playing live music for Chaplin and Keaton silent films — in Koszalin reinforced with double bass. Then the Confusion Project: a Gdańsk trio from the border of jazz and progressive rock, with several hundred concerts in Europe and Asia.

LOUIS SARSKY ORCHESTRA

An artistic collective founded by two multi-instrumentalists and composers — Damian Szymczak and Piotr Tomala. Their music is a meeting of early jazz, ragtime, tango, swing and klezmer.

The hallmark of OLS are chamber concerts and original music performed live for silent films — Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Roman Polanski and others. It is a formula in which the listener, with the eye of imagination, moves into the world of cinema, traveling through epochs, places and situations known from film frames.

At the concert in Koszalin, the duo will perform guest performances reinforced with double bass. In the music of the 1920s and 1930s — the same that accompanied silent cinema — the double bass was the obvious heart of the rhythm section, so this encounter sounds extremely natural.

In 2025, on the occasion of its five years of activity, the Orchestra received the Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. Her album “THE KID” — a tribute to Chaplin's work, inspired by the film “Brzdek” — was released in 2021 by DUX Recording Producers, under the patronage of Dwójka Polski Radia and TVP Kultura.

The ensemble collaborated with, among others, the National Film Archive — Audiovisual Institute, Institute of National Remembrance, Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Institute in Moscow, creating the musical setting of the performances (“Resistance. Stubbornness. Solidarity”, “Rise to Live”, “Polish Parade”) and productions of the Television Theater and the Polish Radio Theater.

CONFUSION PROJECT

At the end of the festival, the bass changes its character for the only time: the role that the double bass played for three evenings is taken over by the bass guitar of Piotr Gierszewski. This is a conscious break in the program — the trio's music defends itself so strongly that it doesn't need any justification.

Confusion Project is a trio from the border of jazz, prog-jazz and jazz fusion, founded in Gdańsk in 2013: Michał Ciesielski (piano), Piotr Gierszewski (bass guitar), Adam Golicki (drums).

They have several hundred concerts in Poland and abroad — in Lithuania, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, China, Russia and Kazakhstan. They toured China three times as part of the Jazz Po Polsku initiative (2019, 2023, 2024), playing a total of more than 40 concerts, including Blue Note Beijing, Blue Note Shanghai, Jazz At The Lincoln Center Shanghai and Tsinghua World Music Festival in Beijing. Earlier, in 2017, they played 16 concerts in Kazakhstan and Russia, including at the Karaganda and Ulan-Ude philharmonics and at the Baikal Waves festival in Irkutsk. Since 2023, they have collaborated with Italian jazz singer Simona De Rosa — so far they have played more than 50 concerts together in Poland, Germany, Italy and China.

For more than thirteen years of activity, the trio has developed their own musical language, which, as the musicians themselves say, is their way of telling stories. Confusion Project's music is illustrative and programmatic, with almost cinematic dramaturgy; alongside jazz and progressive rock, it includes drum & bass, classical music and clear inspirations from film music.

It is worth adding that since 2020 the team has been running the #1CD1Tree campaign, as part of which it has already funded the planting of more than 2000 trees in places destroyed by human activity.

About the festival:

Koszalin BassFest! was first held in September 2021. On the stage of the Koszalin Philharmonic there are artists united by a common denominator, which is the double bass.

The double bass functions primarily as an ensemble instrument. Its noble and universal sound fits into many musical genres, which made it possible to create an ideologically coherent festival. One of the goals of Koszalin BassFest! there is a correlation between the festival and the double bass itself with Koszalin and Central Pomerania.

The first edition was awarded the “MADE in Koszalin” Laurel in the Culture and Design category and the Award of the Mayor of Koszalin for the Cultural Initiative of the Year 2021.

Organizer: BASSFEST Foundation

Graphics and text: BASSFEST Foundation

date: 10 October 2026 (Saturday), 7 p.m.

tickets: I ZONE — 44 zł

II ZONE — 39 zł

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