12. Polska Jazz Festival
The new generation of Polish jazz at Opus
7-9 November 2024

Rooted in a strong tradition and animated by incredible open-mindedness, Polish jazz comes into the spotlight for the 12th time at Opus Jazz Club’s Polska Jazz festival. Organised jointly by BMC and the Polish Institute in Budapest, the concerts from 7 to 9 November showcase the new generation of Polish jazz.

The festival launches on 7 November with Kosmonauci, a boy band with a jazz background that draws on hip-hop, drum & bass and improvisation in its musical language. The instrumentation, including saxophone, bass, vibraphone and drums, creates the group's unique style, balancing between emotional melodies and polyrhythmic structures. This spring, they released their debut album Sorry, nie tu, as the inaugural album of U Jazz Me, a sublabel of U Know Me Records. On June 7th, Kosmonauci won the Sanki award, organized by the prestigious Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, which highlights the most interesting players on the Polish music scene.

Masovian Mantra, taking the stage on November 8, is an original jazz project by Michał Barański. Together with top musicians of the Polish and international jazz scene, they combine inspiration from Masovian and Indian folk music, resulting in truly melodic and rhythmic sounds. Barański is a creative and brave artist of the contemporary Polish jazz scene. His achievements include several albums alongside leaders representing various, sometimes extreme, regions of the music scene: Bennie Maupin, Dayna Stephens, Dan Tepfer, Tomasz Stanko, Michal Urbaniak, or Zbigniew Namysłowski. Recently, he has been studying Indian Carnatic music and demonstrating Indian vocal percussion (konnakol) in practice. His debut album as a leader, Masovian Mantra won the Fryderyk award (the Polish Grammy) in 2023.

The festival ends with the concert of Michał Aftyka Quintet on November 9, whose music communicates the emotions experienced by modern individuals – ranging from unabashed delight in the present moment, through confusion in unverified theories, to fear associated with the development of cutting-edge technologies. The quintet’s music is inspired by the contemporary German scene (Petter Eldh, Christian Lillinger, Robert Landfermann, Elias Stemeseder) as well as the American scene (Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Mark Turner). Their debut album Frukstrakt (2023) was honored with a Fryderyk award, and also received a nomination for the prestigious Deutscher Jazzpreis.

Tickets for each concert are available for 3500 HUF on the spot, online at bmc.jegy.hu, and at InterTicket Jegypont partners across Hungary.