KUBA CICHOCKI
“Imagine the precise moment,” says Polish pianist Kuba Cichocki, “when the energies of heart, mind, and body come together: when all three connect.” The New York-based improviser and composer specializes in merging that which is often kept at odds: the classic and the avant-garde, the technical and the emotional; the rigorously written and the spontaneously performed. One of the exceptional talents to emerge from the Eastern European jazz scene in the late 2000s, Cichocki has persistently matured a personal style over the course of his career, leading him from—in his youth—touring and recording work with European stars Zbigniew Namysłowski, Michael Urbaniak, and Ursula Dudziak to—now, in his adulthood—groundbreaking experiments that throw even New York’s brightest musicians into uncharted territory.
In 2010, Cichocki left Warsaw on a scholarship to attend the music school at City College of New York, affording him tutelage under contemporary jazz masters Sam Yahel, Kevin Hays, John Patitucci, Ray Gallon, and famed composer Mike Holober—during which period he established himself on the city scene working with 5x-Grammy winning Afro-Cuban bass legend John Benitez and the Panamanian iconoclast Jorge Sylvester. He shared the stage with icons Chris Potter, Billy Drewes, and Marvin Sewell; and he recorded albums across genres with, among others, Sylvester (Mayhem at Large, 2021), trumpeter Josh Levinson (Dusk, Wise Cat Records 2020), composer Andrew Bergmann (45 Minutes For 128 Musicians, 2015), and Polish vocal talent Bogna Kicinska (The Maze, Surca Music 2014, nominated for the 2015 Fryderyk award), and Brazilian rising star Livio Almeida (DCLA Sessions, 2011). With celebrated experimentalists like New York’s Steven Gauci, Jason Nazary, and Kenneth Jimenez, Cichocki performed at the city’s foremost creative music clubs—IBEAM, Spectrum, Downtown Music Gallery, and Main Drag; and with leading voices of the city’s straight-ahead scene—e.g., young stars Lucas Pino, Colin Stranahan, Edward Perez, Rick Rosato, and Rafal Sarnecki—he performed at the famed 55 Bar, Cornelia Street Cafe, and Shapeshifter Lab, all the while appearing at jazz festivals across the United States, Europe, and Asia.
But it was Cichocki’s own projects that would drive home a surprising new agenda. 2021’s Brisk Distortions placed him in intimate, angular conversation with Village Voice’s “New York’s Best Guitarist” Brandon Seabrook for a duet recording filled with fragmented, exuberant melody and off-color shapes. Chosen by Cadence Jazz as one of the best releases of 2021, it followed the success of Live at Spectrum (Multikulti, 2018) and 2016’s Audubon Lab Experiment, which both saw Cichocki heaping himself in the mannerisms of the avant-garde—the latter receiving Jazz Press’s “Top Note” award as April 2017’s album of the month. Now, poised to put musicians from disparate scenes into unlikely conversation, Cichocki releases his latest recording, Flowing Circles, this October on Brooklyn Jazz Underground. With dancing folk melodies, avant-textures, vocal numbers, inspiring technical achievement, and a spiritual rush, Cichocki’s latest work reasserts his lifelong commitment: to harness all of the energetic powers of music and, as the composer wryly states: “To see what’s going to happen.”