Przemysław Strączek – jazz guitarist, composer, producer and band leader. Graduate of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, honored with, among others, the Special Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2013) and the Award of the Marshal of the Silesian Voivodeship in the field of music (2015).
For over two decades, he has consistently pursued his own artistic path, based on dialogue between cultures, styles and personalities. Searches in the sphere of music take place on many levels: in the approach to harmony, aesthetics, sound or tone color. The sum of these new perspectives is reflected in the recordings – each subsequent album becomes a mosaic composed of different traditions that enter into relations with each other and create a dialogic musical language.
His activity has been marked from the very beginning by a careful search: both within the jazz idiom and on its outskirts – where traditions, musical languages and sensibilities meet. The award in the Marek Bliziński Guitar Competition in Warsaw (2001) opened the way for him to the festival stages. Before he began his solo career, he led his first band Tres Jazz in the years 1998-2006. In 2007, his debut album as a leader, “Earthly Room”, was released, announcing a characteristic feature of his further work: composing for chosen performers in mind and creating music as a space for mutual listening, building relationships and exchanging of artistic experiences.
In 2012, a particularly important experience was performing in the quartet of the legendary Janusz Muniak – a generational and artistic meeting that not only showed how to build and lead a band, but also brought Strączek a new quality: it sharpened his approach to phrasing and sound, embedded him in the Polish jazz tradition, but at the same time confirmed the need for further development and experimentation.
A year earlier – as the only European – he made it to the final of the Thailand International Jazz Conference Solo Competition in Bangkok, where his playing was assessed by an American jury consisting of Danilo Perez, Ben Street and Adam Cruze. It was there that he uttered the words that he would remember for a long time: “Jazz is music that allows you to introduce your own cultural identity into it” – a sentence that became an artistic guide for him.
An important stage of this path was the collaboration with artists from China and Singapore, culminating in the creation of the Przemek Strączek & Asian Strings Collective project and the album “Three Continents” (2016), recorded in Singapore. Although previous albums such as “Evans” (2012) or “White Grain of Coffee” (2014) were created in collaboration with foreign musicians, “Three Continents” was the first fully intercultural project in his portfolio – and at the same time the beginning of a conscious creative direction in which musical journeys become a laboratory of meetings and resonances.
The band consisted of musicians playing traditional Asian instruments, such as the guzheng – a zither with a hypnotic, vibrating sound – and the erhu, a two-stringed bowed instrument with an exceptionally expressive timbre. For Strączek, this was not an attempt to enrich the sound with ornamentation, but rather a profound work on the interpenetration of cultures and ways of thinking about sound. In his compositions, the guitar parts – both classical and electric – created new, organic forms with these instruments. The experience of this collaboration has become a permanent part of his artistic idiom: openness without exoticization, deep respect for the partner and consistent development of the idea of music as a bridge.
Strączek – as a leader and composer – is able to create a space in which traditions do not clash but interpenetrate, leading to the creation of a common musical language. This language is built not only from sounds, but also from mutual listening, empathy and sensitivity – features that have defined his way of working with musicians from the very beginning, regardless of latitude.
The next stage of intercultural exploration was a several-year collaboration with the Chinese improviser Xu Fengxia, with whom he performed at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, the Central Conservatory in Beijing and at the University of Wuhan. The “Cultural Concept” project, with the participation of soloists from Senegal (Kandara Diebaté) and Taiwan (Chiao-Hua Chang), was an extension of this approach. The material recorded on the album is the result of several years of groundwork – earlier performances in various configurations allowed Strączek and the invited musicians to develop common sound and structural principles.
At the same time, Strączek continued to work in his own permanent jazz line-up, which resulted in the release of the album “Fig Tree” in 2019 with Marcin Kaletka, Francesco Angiuli and Patryk Dobosz. The album gained wide recognition – the British-French portal Jazz Fuel recognized it as one of the best European jazz albums of 2020. The vinyl edition was ranked 4th among the best-selling vinyl records in Poland (according to ZPAV). Most of the songs on “Fig Tree” were previously tested at concerts, which allowed Strączek and the band to refine their sound concepts and arrangements. This is not an isolated practice, the next album is also a consequence of earlier getting to know each other.
At the beginning of 2025, the most anticipated album in Strączek’s career to date was released – “Endless Mystery” (premiere March 28, 2025), recorded with the participation of the world-famous British saxophonist Andy Sheppard (associated with the ECM label). This is the result of many years of cooperation, which began in 2019 with joint concert tours and only in 2025 found its fulfillment in the recording studio.
Przemysław Strączek has given concerts with his own music in 17 countries on three continents, participated in international artistic exchange programs (including the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Scottish Jazz Federation) and collaborated with many outstanding artists, including Janusz Muniak, Xu Fengxia, Andy Sheppard, Marcin Kaletka, Kandara Diebaté and Raphaelle Brochet. Przemysław Strączek’s musical activity is documented by eight of his own albums, and his theoretical work is documented by a two-part textbook “Elementary Principles of Jazz Improvisation on the Guitar”. Each of his projects – regardless of the form – is characterized by maturity and clarity of the idea, which does not arise from an impulse, but from a long-maturing need: music as an art of meeting, creating one’s own vision of artistic communication.
Foreign concert tours and concerts with an original program:
2007 – Czech Republic Przemek Strączek Trio
2010 – Spain,Przemysław Strączek Group
2011 – England,Przemysław Strączek Group
2014 – Scotland, England, Przemysław Strączek International Group
2015 – Singapore, Malaysia, Przemek Strączek & Asian Strings Collective
2017 – Italy, Przemek Strączek Trio
2018 – China, Przemek Strączek & Xu Fengxia Quartet (East Meets East)
2019 – Italy, Przemysław Strączek Quartet
2021 – Slovenia, Przemysław Strączek & Chiao-Hua Chang
2022 – Czech Republic and Slovakia, Przemysław Strączek & Chiao-Hua Chang
2023 – Germany, Belgium, Netherlands: w/European Jazz Quintet
2023 – England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Italy: Przemysław Strączek Quartet
In his career, he has performed in many countries around the world: Czech Republic, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, China, England, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.
