Piotr Kędzierski – 20th- and 21st-century music performance course, basics of improvisation (for pianists / ensembles with piano)

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Dr. hab. Piotr Kędzierski – pianist, chamber musician, composer. As a scholarship holder of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, he completed postgraduate studies in contemporary chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. He pursued his doctoral studies at the F. Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. He has taught at the F. Chopin University of Music as well as at the Academy of Music in Łódź. At the Academy of Music in Kraków, he focuses on contemporary chamber music as well as improvisation. He is the author of compositions for various ensembles, which have been performed for over two decades in Poland and, among other countries, in England, Australia, Estonia, Spain, and Germany. Piotr Kędzierski performs in a permanent piano duo with Justyna Piękoś-Kędzierska, dedicating himself to performing and recording contemporary compositions by Polish composers, as documented by studio recordings including Mosaic I, Mosaic II, Near-Far.

During the Summer Academy of Music at AMKP, he offers a multifaceted approach to issues of new music in chamber ensembles for various line-ups, as well as classes on the basics of improvisation (group or individual applications are possible).

In his work, he focuses on the current needs of the performer and guides them toward immersing themselves in the uniqueness and complexity of contemporary music, offering a detailed insight into its specificity. Depending on needs and intentions, he deals with, for example, unconventional performance techniques, the emotional and technical content related on one hand to musical tradition and on the other to the avant-garde, the coexistence of free and more strictly defined ways of playing, and improvisation, while ensuring the adequacy of the means to the style and the conceptual and performance coherence of the works being developed.

During basic improvisation classes, the focus is on both the compositional aspect of music created ad hoc and the performance aspect. There is room for reflection on the characteristics of individual styles and their practice, for acquiring and improving the ability to use the tonal system and atonal structures in improvisation, and finally – for implementing certain formal assumptions. The inclusion of these elements is adjusted to the interests and abilities of the performer. One of the most important tools in working on improvisation is spatial-color hearing and the imagination of sound plans.