the POLSKI blog

Over a year ago I wrote about a project called Cafe Fogg, which revived an old Polish crooner’s music and ‘translated’ it for a modern audience. Projekt Warszawiak (Warszawiak, in Polish, is a person living in Warsaw)  is inspired by – and relies on – music produced by legendary Warsaw-based folk bands like Orkiestra z [...]

Sad news this morning – Polish composer, Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, best known for his “Third Symphony”, died in Poland at the age of 76. Born in Silesia, he spent most of his life working and teaching in Katowice, the heart of the most industrialised region in Poland. Until early 1990s he remained largerly unknown, even [...]

When I say fresh here, I mean new – new to me at least. I’ve discovered  Michał by accident when someone posted a link to this lovely video. Michał talks about his music (in Polish, but with English subtitles) and the clip is illustrated with his fantastic acoustic jazz. According to his site, his debut [...]

Those of you who use Spotify probably know now that it’s become social and can be linked to Facebook. This way your Facebook friends can browse and subscribe to your playlists too. That’s how I found out that – to my surprise – my Polish playlist has already 31 subscribers! That’s great! It’s been modified [...]

I just want one CD for Christmas. I know it’s almost a year old, but I’ve only just been told about it. (Yeah, thanks, ‘friends’ for keeping me up to date). And I instantly fell in love with it. Mieczyslaw Fogg was a very famous Polish crooner, whose career spanned half a century. He first [...]

This one is for music lovers planning a trip to Warsaw. To mark the bicentennial of Frederic Chopin’s birth (yes, he was Polish), the Polish capital has published a Chopin audio city guide. Available in eight languages, the guide will take tourists to some key locations related to the great pianist. You can download the [...]

Matt Bianco fans have a reason to be cheerful this autumn. Basia, whose voice is familiar to anyone who in the early 1980s danced to Whose Side Are You On?, is back with a new album. (Oh, ok, the album was released a few months ago, but I only just listened to it for the [...]

So Madonna’s first Polish gig this week in Warsaw seems to be the biggest musical event of the summer (in the pop category at least – Britney’s cancelled, and last week’s U2 gig in Chorzow probably fell into a totally different category altogether). Although when I say ‘the biggest I actually mean the most controversial [...]