Hearsay Piotr Schmidt

• 1 Unwanted Truth 06:24
• 2 Never Give up, Sometimes Let Go 07:54
• 3 Slow Motion 07:32
• 4 Hearsay 07:57
• 5 This Is Not Real 05:23
• 6 Good Old Roy 05:43
• Total Runtime 40:53

Info for Hearsay

"Hearsay" - this is the title of jazz trumpeter Piotr Schmidt's sixteenth album. After Komeda Unknown 1967, which once again showed Schmidt to be a brilliant arranger, it was time to invite the listeners once again into the world of his original music. This time it is an emotional journey full of mystery and understatement....

The title Hearsay refers to heard information without confirmation, which often leads to misunderstandings and a falsified perception of reality. The trumpeter's new album becomes a space for him to confront these rumours through his music, in order to ultimately try to see the truth, free from subjectivity.

Each composition on the album alludes to a different hearsay - a rumour - so it is not surprising that the trumpeter gives each one to the listener in a different way. He uses a variety of jazz styles to do so - from spacious melancholy to energetic, condensed improvisations.

And so we have the rawness of Harish Raghavan's double bass intro to the album's opening track, Unwanted Truth, which is a musical translation of the mechanism of displacement. Slow motion - the only non-author composition on the album, for which Schmidt's friend from his music school days in Gliwice, Bartosz Pieszka, is responsible - is a piece that makes us realise how often we live in slow motion, but also in slumber and marasm.

In our own world. For better or for worse, because ignorance can sometimes be bliss.

This Is Not Real is the next after Unwanted Truth to disbelieve reality. A failure to accept the obvious and even a denial - often accompanying us after the death of someone very close to us. Good Old Roy breaks out of the album's main narrative of meaning. For it refers to Schmidt's great inspiration, which was Roy Hargrove. An inspiration that in a way contributed to the creation of the band Schmidt Electric in 2011. With this composition, the leader charts his increasingly less two-track path, blurring the line between electric-groove jazz and that of acoustic-space jazz. A new quality is emerging, of which this album is a kind of manifestation.

Full of contrasting feelings - hope and doubt, doggedness and resignation - Never Give Up Sometimes Let Go seems to be one of the more important messages of this album.

The leitmotif and title of the album are linked to the idea that there is no objective truth, but only subjective perceptions of reality. This concept is one of the fundamental philosophical and epistemological positions. It suggests that our perception and interpretation of the world is dependent on our individual experiences, beliefs, values, emotions and social context.

Even if we all look at the same object or event, each person may perceive different aspects, focus on different details and draw individual conclusions. Our perception is shaped by our concepts, beliefs and emotions, which influence the way we perceive and interpret the world.

In addition, cultural and social perspectives play an important role in our perception of the world. Our values, social norms, traditions and cultural context influence how we interpret and understand the meaning of life. What may be true in one culture or community may be completely different from what is considered true in another.

However, it is worth noting that the non-recognition of objective truth does not mean that there are no universal truths or some objective criteria of evaluation. There are features of reality that can be verified and confirmed by scientific research methods, mathematics or logic. Although even in these fields, our subjective perceptions and interpretations can influence the way we perceive and understand these objective facts.

Hearsay is an album that invites listeners to immerse themselves in the mysterious world of jazz stories, full of unusual stories but also accompanying uncertainty. Piotr Schmidt believes that his music will, above all, stimulate the imagination of his listeners and become a new prism in the perception of reality.

Piotr Schmidt International Sextet:
Piotr Schmidt, trumpet, compositions (1, 2, 4, 5, 6)
Kęstutis Vaiginis, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
David Doruzhka, electric guitar
Paweł Tomaszewski, piano
Michał Barański, double bass (3, 4, 6)
Sebastian Kuchczyński, drums (3, 4, 6)
Harish Raghavan, double bass (1, 2, 5)
Jonathan Barber, drums (1, 2, 5)

Piotr Schmidt
jazz trumpeter, graduate cum laude of the Jazz Institute at the Academy of Music, Katowice, Poland. He studied trumpet under the direction of Piotr Wojtasik. In 2006 he won a scholarship to University of Louisville, Kentucky. As an individual musician he received honourable mentions in the 2008 and 2009 Jazz nad Odrą competitions in Wrocław, and in the 2008 “I’st Tarnów Jazz Contest”. Tarnów Jazz Contest. He came third in the 2008 Zmagania Jazzowe in Szczecin, won Grand Prix in 2010 “Novum Jazz Festival” in Łomża and received an award for The Best Soloist in XXXIV Getxo Jazz Festival, Spain 2010.

I was born to a family with musical traditions. My mother’s a choral conductor by education; she has always been a great interpreter of classical piano at home, and a great sight reader. After raising the kids, she became a music educator and a school concert organiser on behalf of the Silesian and the Opole Philharmonics. My dad is a well-known jazz historian, author of a three-volume history of jazz which, since the late nineties, has been the textbook of choice at many jazz departments in Poland. He was a pianist and swing band leader in the 1940s, and afterwards became a leading Polish jazz and music educator, host of countless concerts and festivals, and jazz critic at various music publications. I was the only one of their three children to study music and I quickly started winning jazz competitions in Poland and Europe. After I won all that I could, I focused on my recording career

Currently, I’m not only a jazz trumpeter, but also a composer, band leader, music producer and publisher, lecturer at the Jazz Institutes of the University of Applied Sciences in Nysa and the Katowice Academy of Music, where in 2016 I’ve gained a doctoral degree in Music. In 2006 I won a scholarship to University of Louisville, Kentucky and early in my career (2006-2010) I won many individual awards and Grand Prix’s now being one of the most important jazz figures in Poland and middle Europe.

To date, I have produced and published twelve own albums, including three with Schmidt Electric. For the past eight years I have ranked among the best three jazz trumpeters in the annual Jazz Top poll of the Jazz Forum European magazine. One of my latest projects: Piotr Schmidt Quartet – Tribute to Tomasz Stańko is considered by Wolf Mueller (Sony Music Germany) as one of the 10 best albums from 2018 in the World!)

Among my many collaborators are: Walter Smith III, Matthew Stevens, Alex Hutchings, Ernesto Simpson, Ed Partyka, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski, Dante Luciani, Francesco Angiuli. As publisher and producer, I have co-created SJRecords (www.sjrecords.eu) through which, from 2011, there have been published 52 albums well regarded by music fans and professionals, critics and music journalists ...

This album contains no booklet.