re:tradition | Concert | Horizon: Ewa Grochowska and musical wanderers (POL)

This year’s festival production, the Friday re:tradition concert, has been prepared by Ewa Grochowska – a musician, singer, and philosopher who has been connected with Lublin for over 30 years. For three decades she has played the violin and sung traditional songs, studied and researched performance styles, and carried out concert, educational, and outreach activities devoted to traditional music and folk culture of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. On the symbolic anniversary of her artistic work, we invite you to a concert in which she will perform together with artists invited by her.

A concert of wishes, dreams, longings, and fascination with sound, it is based on songs and themes that brought its performers together through musical journeys and adventures, the shared discovery of new lands, and the revival of memories of forgotten or little-known people and places that carry true musical treasures. It is the result of friendships and creative collaborations developed over many years through field recordings, studio sessions, concerts, and artistic projects.

During this time, together and individually, following our own personal and unique maps, we searched for melodies, languages, styles, images, and symbols that resonate with the sensitivity and imagination of contemporary people – the people we are today.

Yet we are still fascinated and inspired by the “old” world of rural music – evocative and moving. We draw inspiration from it, recreate melodies and songs we have heard, and recall observed gestures. With their help, we create our own personal stories and musical microcosms that allow us to pause for a moment and feel at home.

Can such a multi-layered story be condensed and presented to an audience through several songs and compositions? The title “horizon” reflects the artistic idea behind the concert. Something is there, unnamed and visible only in outline; we do not know whether it truly exists. We see it from afar, always from a moving point.

With each step, the horizon shifts, changing its colour and shape. The map we follow is like one from a fairy tale – shimmering and changing; something disappears, someone appears.

We will travel along rivers, on both banks and far from the main current: the Vistula, Bug, Narew, Pilica, Oder, Warta, San, and also the Danube – in its imagined form, written in the texts of songs with a lowercase letter.

We will cross Poland and visit Ukraine. We will visit the Lublin region, Kielce region, Mazovia, Kuyavia and Pałuki, Greater Poland, and Lesser Poland.

We will stop in Przystałowice Małe, Glina, Mchowice, Radziejewo, Zagórzyce, Wólka Ratajska, and near Zamość, Lublin, Warsaw, Poznań, Łódź, and Toruń.

Traditional ritual songs and melodies will be heard: lyrical, dance, reflective, sad, joyful, and mysterious. We will recall our musical masters – those whom we met personally and with whom we shared beautiful and creative moments, as well as those whose voices, notes, and silhouettes we know only from old recordings, archives, and stories.

The guide through this itinerary will be Ewa Grochowska – a singer and violinist from the Kielce region, now living in eastern Poland, for whom traditional music is both a form of artistic expression and a life choice. Together with Maniucha Bikont – a performer fluent in various musical languages – she will sing songs that have connected them along their shared artistic path.

They will be accompanied by an exceptional ensemble of musicians: an experienced traveller through forgotten musical paths – Jacek Hałas; charismatic violinists – Maciej Filipczuk and Marcin Lorenc; clarinettist Michał Żak, who constantly shifts stylistic horizons; and the master of brass instruments – Piotr Wróbel.

The concert will also welcome, for a brief stop on this journey, members of the Tęgie Chłopy ensemble: Michał Maziarz, Dorota Murzynowska, Szczepan Pospieszalski, and Marcin Żytomirski, as well as singers: Agnieszka Kalita, Ewa Szymczak, and Marta Urban-Burdalska.

Performers:
Ewa Grochowska – vocals, violin, narration
Maniucha Bikont – vocals
Maciej Filipczuk – violin
Jacek Hałas – accordion, vocals
Marcin Lorenc – violin, bass
Piotr Wróbel – tuba, trombone, looper
Michał Żak – clarinet, soprano saxophone, transverse flute

Guest performers:
Marta Urban-Burdalska – vocals
Agnieszka Kalita – vocals
Michał Maziarz – valve trombone
Dorota Murzynowska – baraban drum
Szczepan Pospieszalski – trumpet
Ewa Szymczak – vocals
Marcin Żytomirski – violin

Details

When: August 21 (Friday), 20:30-22:00
Where: Festival Stage, Dominican Square
Admission free