Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Good evening!

Tonight I'd like to share with you a short video made by journalists from Gazeta Wyborcza. It's an experiment made on a group of French people met by accident on a street. The reporters wanted to see their reactions to the most recent situation in Poland. First of all, they made them guess what country they were describing: they mentioned that it's a country were the deputies work and vote during the night, where the government wants to impose new regulations on the Constitutional Tribunal, mass media, access to the personal information about the civils in the Internet and to restrict civil liberties. The interviewed people were, at least, surprised, when they found out that this actually happens in... Poland.

You can see it here:

I'm not surprised, but I do feel terrified. I'm terrified because of the things made by our government, but I'm even more terrified when I realize that this is the result of a democratic decision of the Polish people. At the very beginning I had the feeling that the reality is a surreal dream of Luis Buñuel. Now I know that I was wrong - it's not Luis Buñuel, it's Michael Haneke, who always makes me want to escape from this world as far as possible, so that I not have to participate in it.

If you think that I'm getting boring with my complaining about the same thing all the time - you're right. But, come on, is it possible not to complain? I don't think so anymore.

At least we have music. This time - Janis Joplin, who would be 73 today. 
Enjoy!
 

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Hello everybody!

Tonight I'd like to share with you some of my reflections about famous people. Last week I had an opportunity to play in the orchestra Collegium F on New Year's Concerts in Warsaw in the Roma Music Theater and in Poznań. After giving 5 concerts in only 7 days I felt extremely exhausted, but also full of thoughts about the human nature. I worked with two big stars of Polish music, who I haven't been a fan of, and whose music I would consider as cheap mass art. But still it's undeniable that for some reason they've already left their trace in the history of Polish music. I had worked with famous musician before, some of them very strange, so I wasn't very surprised when it turned out that working with those artists was nothing but a very unpleasant experience. They were moody, troublesome and they had no respect for other musician, not to mention the organizers and plenty of other people that were doing whatever they could to satisfy them.

Although it wasn't my first time to play concerts like those, I still haven't got used to this kind of behavior and I'm not able to consider it as something normal, common and acceptable. That's maybe because I could never understand the notion of double standards in some situations. Before the first concert in Warsaw I felt frustrated, helpless and sad (apart from being just hungry and thirsty, because the rehearsal before the first of two concerts that I played that evening was much longer that it should be because of those artists) and I started to think that maybe it's just impossible to be different for people like them.

But I won my hope back during the rehearsal with a famous singer from Roma Music Theatre, Edyta Krzemień. She was nice, professional and... just amazing. She rehearsed what she needed to rehearse, she asked the conductor to repeat some difficult parts and she said 'thank you' to everybody on the stage. So simply. She disappeared and she came back few hours later when it was her turn to sing on the first concert. And then she made me forget about the whole world with her voice, the power of her expression and her sensibility.

I didn't ask anybody for an autograph. I'm just happy that I could shake hands with her. And that I could be a part of her music.

Enjoy: