Barbora Polyxena Nowak: Arborio
The debut album Arborio by Barbora Polyxena Nowak is out now on the Jipangu label.
Barbora recorded the album with the assistance of Miroslav Tóth at Divadlo 29.
Barbora recorded the album with the assistance of Miroslav Tóth at Divadlo 29.
Barbora Polyxena Nowak moves fluently between early music and the contemporary improvisation scene. “What connects these two worlds is mainly improvisation. Each musical mode relies on different techniques and approaches, but both offer a similar sense of freedom and variability.”
Originally trained in classical piano at the Pardubice Conservatory, she is currently studying harpsichord at the Academy of Early Music in Brno. Recently, her work has focused on unorthodox playing techniques, preparations, and performing inside the piano. “The first time I heard George Crumb’s Makrokosmos I, it completely transformed the way I perceived the piano. I began to experiment, composed a few sketches, and eventually found myself absorbed by improvisation based on preparations. That’s when I met amazing artists like Elisabeth Harnik and Reinhold Friedl, who deeply influenced me. In free improvisation, my great role model is Cecil Taylor.”
Barbora has collaborated with the Prague Improvisation Orchestra, Tomáš Niesner, and the free-jazz-core group Frisk. She is also part of the trio Nowak / Páchová / Raková, currently preparing a new album. In the future, she would like to focus more on composition in addition to interpretation and improvisation.“Composing music has always been a dream of mine. But free improvisation also contains elements of composition—preparing the piano, for example, already determines the sonic palette, and from that the themes and ideas emerge. Form and a sense of temporal structure are also key. I especially enjoy interpreting graphic scores, which are clearly composed, but offer endless possibilities of realization.”
Arborio is Barbora’s debut recording, made with the support of Miro Tóth (Shibuya Motors, Drť, Srnka, Dystopic Requiem Quartet) at Divadlo 29 in Pardubice. “Arborio rice beautifully absorbs and binds together different flavours. That’s what I was trying to do musically—merge various noises and sounds with melody and harmony, so that the result wouldn’t be total chaos, but more like a kind of sonic risotto.”
Listen and download the album here > jipangu.bandcamp.com/album/arborio
