GALO: You have two different instrumentation ensembles – one in Poland and one in New York. How do you maintain working relationships with both? Are all of them featured on your albums?

RS: On my albums there are mainly Polish musicians present. When I am in Poland, I mainly play in a quartet with Pawel Kaczmarczyk on piano, Wojciech Pulcyn on bass, and Lukasz Zyta on drums. In this ensemble, I recorded my first album Songs from a New Place. On my second album, aside from the previously mentioned musicians, Jerzy Malek, who plays the trumpet, Pawel Dobrowolski, who played the drums for two tracks, as well as percussionist Jose Manuel Alban Juarez could be heard.

While working on my second album, I also invited Lucas Pino, who is a musician in my New York sextet, to participate in the recordings. Many of the compositions I wrote were with him in mind as the primary soloist. I couldn’t imagine an album without him in it; therefore, I invited him to Poland for the recording. A year later, the concert tour of my quartet in Poland kicked off, in which Lucas and Colin Stranahan — my percussionist from my New York ensemble — participated in. This was the moment when two of my bands from two different continents assembled together into one group. This was a very inspirational experience for me. The way that Polish musicians play jazz is distinctively different from the New York musician’s concept of it. It was very interesting observing the musicians, and how after each concert, they were finding a common language.

GALO: You’ve been compared to pianist Pawel Kaczmarczyk for your adventurous flare as well as to Kurt Rosenwinkel. Would you say this is an accurate portrayal?

RS: I am compared to Kurt Rosenwinkel quite often. Currently, I believe, he is the most popular guitarist in New York. A lot of young guitar players want to sound just like him. When I first came to New York, I was quite horrified that every guitarist (in one sense or another) expressed and articulated sounds just like Kurt. I never tried to copy his style; nevertheless, subconsciously I adopted certain elements of it.

The comparison to Pawel Kaczmarczyk seems to me to be a bit less accurate. We’ve been working together since 2003. Pawel helped me significantly in building my career as a musician. We definitely had a big impact on one another. But as musicians we are very different. Pawel is a master in building tension and controlling the level of energy in the band. He plays in a very suggestive manner and comes to an understanding easily with the rest of the band. I don’t possess such characteristics. I concentrate on the nuances in leading the melody, the formation of expression, as well as accustoming myself to the rhythm of the percussion.

GALO: Recently, you came out with a new album entitled The Madman Rambles Again. How long did it take you to write it? What did the process look like?

RS: The tracks that found their way to the album The Madman Rambles Again were created in the timespan of two years before the album was even recorded. Indeed, the whole process of composition, arrangement, recording and mixing, consumed an incredible amount of work effort and time. I am at a point in my life at which I can allow this. I can contemplate over every miniscule element of composition, experiment, and fix even the most subtle mistakes. In a couple of years, I won’t have time for this.

GALO: Were there any key differences between this album and your previous one? Did you try anything new that you hadn’t before?

RS: The main difference between this album and the previous one was the enlargement of the ensemble by bringing in the saxophone, flute, trumpet, as well as the percussion instruments. This allowed me to have much broader arrangement possibilities. I didn’t have to be confined to a single melodic line played by the guitar or piano. In most of the tracks on the album, you can hear two or three independent melodic lines. A lot of the critics of the album pointed out how little of guitar solos can actually be heard on it. Undeniably, on The Madman Rambles Again it is rare that you will hear a guitar playing a melody solo. Usually, the guitar is connected in sound and melody to the saxophone, flute, or trumpet. Besides that, the structure of the tracks is more powerful on this record than on the previous one. Tracks like “The Student Protest” or “The Madman Rambles Again” have a strictly arranged theme and run for about four minutes. Such expansive fragmental arrangements are not typical for jazz recordings. Writing such complex forms was a challenge for me.

GALO: Why did you choose to record the entire album in Poland?

RS: I decided to record the album in Poland for several reasons. In my opinion, the musicians who I play with in Poland are high-class instrumentalists, and they understand quite well how I would like my compositions to sound. During the recording of the album, my New York band was only starting to formulate, therefore, I decided that it would be safer to wait a little, before I would record an album with an American ensemble. Moreover, the album, The Madman Rambles Again, was recorded with the awareness that most of my fans are in Poland, and that during the promotion of the album, I would be playing concerts with mainly Polish musicians.

GALO: On your blog, you wrote that you were never a fan of the big band ensemble when it comes to instrumentation. Why is that?

RS: I’m not a fan of big bands performing modern music. I definitely like the traditional big band ensembles a lot more such as those leaders like Thad Jones, Count Basie, or Duke Ellington. However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect for the more contemporary big bands. It’s just a matter of personal taste.

GALO: Your music has been described as fresh, daring, and soothing. Where does your inspiration come from for each individual piece?

RS: The process of composition is usually very long. Often, it takes me two months to write a song. During such an extended period of time, there are many events in my life that take place. They certainly affect the process of my compositions. The first theme of a track usually is established under the inspiration of an already existing work of another musician. Further development of this theme is most often inspired by something that is entirely different. This is also why it is so hard to choose the right title for a song later on.

GALO: You’ve played in eight different countries and toured all over the United States and Poland. What are some of your favorite memories from your tours?

RS: I remember all my tours very fondly. I love to travel — to wake up every day in a different place and meet people brought up in a slightly different culture. In terms of adventures, my favorite memory is of my Eastern European tour with the American band Catapults and Parachutes. We played 19 concerts from Estonia to Romania. The amount of adventures we encountered during this tour would be a perfect storyline for a film.

For example, when we were crossing the border of Hungary and Romania, we were stopped by the border control after they heard we were musicians from New York. They took us to a small building, and instead of searching our luggage, they told us to play a song for them from our repertoire. It was a demanding challenge for us, since a lot of the tunes which we played were atonal and complex metrically. Nevertheless, the percussionist provided a beat-box rhythm, the bassist came in soon after humming the bass line in a low voice, and I, together with the saxophonist, tried to sing the melody. The guards from border control in a threatening voice told us to stop and start all over again. This time, one of the guards was recording us on his cell-phone. We were completely disoriented. When we stopped singing, the guard, who had been recording us, smiled and said that he was recording the video for his girlfriend. Afterward, each of us received a can of Red Bull, and we were released.

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