Stories From The Eastern West

Aga Derlak remembers her fascination with music as a young child. And once she began learning piano, she would lose hours in flowing through improvised journeys at the keyboard. This passion led her to gaining a place on the year-long Berklee Global Jazz Institute program. And in this interview, she discusses the impact that has had on many levels of her life. The founder of the pr

In Marek Pędziwiatr there is a connection between the past and the present. The history of jazz and the African American musicians, who created it, and Polish innovators from Chopin through Krzysztof Komeda and Niemen. Marek is a hub, a central force pulling his golden threads of jazz, hip-hop, classical music, avant-garde, and Slavic folk. But his interest in weaving these genres

To describe Joanna Duda as simply a pianist doesn't capture the extraordinary dimensions of the music she produces. Whether touching a broken keyboard, using the sound of a rewinding tape machine, or mixing in field recordings, her innate playfulness allows any instrument to blossom - you get a sense that one of her greatest strengths is to listen attentively to whatever she uses.

In the history of jazz, there haven't been many musicians that give credit to their playing video games. But as a nine-year-old hardcore player, Kuba Więcek developed an affinity with repetitive practice and now feels the need for strategic thinking and fast decision-making has stood him in good stead as a bandleader today. After a pivotal moment as a teenager, which he talks abou

Marcin Masecki considers that he has two parents, jazz and classical music. As a pianist, he is steeped in the tradition of learning piano as a young child with all the purity and precision that comes with that. In this interview, you get the sense of how that triggered Marcin’s disruptive streak, and how that has been central to his approach to music. There is reverence and inte

In the very last episode of Stories of The Eastern West as you knew it, we’re taking you to Estonia, 1989. A group of people there made 2 million others hold hands and create a human chain of unprecedented size and significance. The Baltic countries had a truly turbulent 20th century. They went from regaining their independence to losing it to the USSR and becoming subject to a

Several years after the war, a strange encounter in the heart of Paris made Zofia Posmysz, a former Auschwitz prisoner, start wondering what it would be like to meet her camp overseer. Posmysz turned her fantasy in a successful radio play in which she explored the unlikely perspective of an oppressor, a Nazi German concentration camp overseer. The story inspired a prolific young f

Get to know Piotr Szkopiak, a London-based film and TV director who’s spent a good portion of his life pondering the nature of his identity. Piotr Szkopiak was born in the United Kingdom but into a Polish family. As he grew up, he learned that his parents and neighbours were all World War II prisoners of war who had escaped the USSR but couldn't go back to Poland after

Nicolaus Copernicus, born in 1473, was the orphaned son of a copper merchant in Toruń. Thanks to his bishop uncle, he obtained a first class education at the Kraków Academy and then in Italy, where he became an avid observer of the night sky – even though he was supposed to be preparing for a church career. His day job as a church canon, diplomat and doctor in Frombork – when

Vera Chytilová was the most important woman director of the Czechoslovak New Wave – although she remains relatively unknown outside of Central Europe. As the first female student of the prestigious FAMU film school in Prague, she had to fight in order to do things her own way. During the creative explosion of the Czechoslovak New Wave, she made her most well known film ‘Daisie