After many different musical adventures, the Berlin-based Polish piano virtuoso Marcin Masecki is returning to jazz. His previous jazz album, a unique ragtime recording (Ragtime, BMC Records, 2018) aroused great international interest. This time he pays tribute to one of the giants of jazz, Thelonious Monk, with his trio featuring Eldar Tsalikov (sax, clarinet) and Jan Pieniążek (drums).

The experience of Thelonious Monk has left an enduring mark on the Polish pianist. Like Monk, the binarity of composition and improvisation does not interest him at all, and for Masecki too, composition is coagulated improvisation, while improvisation is described as “instant composing”. For Masecki, the space in between is absolute freedom.

“I first heard Monk when I was 14 or 15 years old and was learning classical piano,” says Marcin Masecki. “Everyone in music school told me at the time that this guy was impossible and couldn’t play a single note correctly on the piano. But what I heard touched me deep inside. As a classic pianist, you often feel pressured to play lyrically and poetically. But Monk saw the piano as a percussion instrument, and sometimes it sounds like a bawling baby in his arms. It was Monk who showed me how to follow my own voice without worrying about what was required of me technically. For him, it's always just about the feeling.”

The material of the trio’s album Monk was also released as an album on BMC Records in early 2025.

Photo: István Huszti / BMC