10 Táto Strana Európy: Piotr Kurek

An interview with Polish composer Piotr Kurek about his musical beginnings, composing for theatre, his creative process and his new release 'The night we slept under an overhanging cliff'.

Piotr Kurek

Piotr Kurek, photographed by Marta Szewczyk

Piotr Kurek is a Warsaw-based composer and musician. Musically active since the turn of the century as a member of various groups, bands and working under several aliases, his work gained most prominence since he started publishing work under his full name in 2009. Since then, he has released 9 albums of solo work and soundtracks, and performed across Europe at festivals like Unsound, CTM, OFF or UH. In addition to releasing music, he also composes for theatre, film and other media.

His most recent string of albums – World Speaks on Edições CN (2022), Peach Blossom on Mondoj (2023), Smartwoods on Unsound (2023) and The night we slept under an overhanging cliff on Longform Editions (2024) – trace a uniquely playful, twisting path. Utilising mainly manipulated voice and chamber music instrumentation as building blocks, the Polish composer makes music which is both impressionistic and cheeky. I mean, not many people reference both early (baroque/renaissance) music and MIDI jazz as influences and the results that Kurek conjures are indeed quite striking and gorgeous.

In our conversation which took place in early April over Zoom, we spoke about Piotr Kurek’s compositional process, his childhood and musical beginnings, his latest release and plans for 2024, parenthood and more. What shone through is his humility, curiosity and how not taking himself too seriously enables him to pursue new ideas with the same enthusiasm that got him into music in the first place. – Adam Badí Donoval

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Adam Badí Donoval: How are you doing? When we spoke first about doing this interview you mentioned that you were about to have a busy few weeks. What were you up to during the last weeks and months?

Piotr Kurek: Most of my recent time is spent moving furniture around. I have a new working space  in the centre of Warsaw. I used my old flat before, but I just sublet it. I don't really need a full flat for what I'm doing so this small space is enough. It's full of things right now (pans camera around to show me the boxes behind and around him) so I need to put everything in its place and just arrange it a bit. Over the past two years, I have been trying to figure out how to balance my time between work and family life since we have a baby now with my partner. It can be a bit more challenging, but it is working. I just have to be more focused and less spontaneous than I used to be. So if someone asks me to create a track for a compilation or do an impromptu collaboration, I usually have to quit now.

You’re a full-time musician, is that right?

Yeah, I am. It’s quite fantastic and I actually don’t know how it happened if I’m being honest. But it’s what I’ve been doing for a long time already, yeah.

Do you mostly work on theatre commissions, or solo music? What does your work entail?

I used to do a lot of music for theatre, but I've chilled out a bit in the last few years. I still do a few performances, maybe just one or two per year. It's not like I'm working on twenty shows or something like that. I only work with people I like and know well. Theatre can be tough and it's not always easy to create music in that kind of environment. It can sometimes also be frustrating because there is not always room for an experiment. I have to focus on the performance that I am working on, which leaves little room for trying out new things. It's a pity because there are resources available, and there are also people who are keen to collaborate, such as actors or musicians. However, there is simply no time during a performance to do so. So, I prefer to work with people who are fun to work with and open to trying new things. I've also started to get into creating music for films, which is pretty cool.

How do you approach composing differently when you have a theatre commission or a film you’re scoring, or when you’re working on an album?

I would say it’s much easier when composing for theatre or film. I more or less know what I’m aiming for and there are some helpful boundaries -  like time of a scene, but also a theme or a subject. The commission is usually very specific and it’s much easier for me because I know the direction it’s taking. I’m usually just working on somebody else’s idea or performance and it takes the pressure away. I like working with people, so that part is really enjoyable

With the music I make for my albums I don’t know where I’m going basically. There is rarely any deadline for that, so I have to remain super focused and keep an interest in what I’m doing for longer periods of time. There is usually nobody waiting for that, so it’s only me who can decide between spending more time with the music I’m working on or moving on to something else. That’s really the only boundary, and even if I set myself deadlines it’s not obligatory, it always changes.

It’s strange to me that you spoke about being disorganised earlier. You had a very busy and productive 2022 and 2023 with World Speaks, Peach Blossom and Smartwoods all coming out in a very short span of time. Do you usually work on many projects simultaneously, or are those projects that were in the making for a long time and just happened to come out in a similar time-frame?

Well, a mix of both. I usually work on a few ideas – I don’t know if it’s good to call them projects – at the same time. I think it’s even healthy for me to abandon a project for a while and to just move onto something else. When I come back to it I can better see where it’s going, or where I could take it. When I’m too deep in an idea or a work I just lose all judgement basically. 

But also, some of the projects I released in the last few years were things I finished a long time before. For example World Speaks, which was sketched out probably two or more years prior to the release happening.

Where in Poland did you grow up?

I grew up in Lublin. It’s a city in south-east/east Poland near the Ukrainian border and then I moved to Warsaw in 2006, so it’s been a while since I’ve been here.

Was there anything going on in Lublin specifically that influenced you a lot in terms of music?

Actually a lot, yeah. As I mentioned it’s a university city so there is a lot of cultural stuff going on. From bigger festivals that I never had much interest in to small initiatives. It’s quite known for its theatre scene, for instance from the past, it’s the area of Gardzienice which is probably one of the most famous Polish theatre groups. I actually got into music partly because of theatre too, because I started working with small independent and amateur theatre groups in Lublin. 

I was also organising events there which were always changing their names, we did those with a friend of mine. They were basically monthly parties with various types of music. There was also one label from my city called OBUH which influenced me for sure. I only met Wojcek who runs the label once and it was a label that was around the city probably one generation before me, but it was still a kind of legendary label. I tried to follow those releases and there was a small music shop where I could buy some of their cassettes and records back then, so yeah.

Lublin is actually probably an even bigger subject, because I was involved in many bands as well. I was playing drums and making stuff on the computer, which is what I do now as well. That was when I was 20, or even younger.

I know you started with music long before that with piano classes when you were growing up. What were those classes like? In Slovakia there is quite a robust network of after-school public arts schools, was it similar?

Yeah, exactly the same. I went to this school for piano classes for probably seven years. I think I hated it. I guess my relationship with music started then, but I really don’t associate what I’m doing right now with that time. I probably have some muscle memory from playing piano, but I’m not really good at it anymore.

Interesting. So was it stuff that was happening later when things clicked for you in terms of wanting to pursue music more seriously? Was there a distinct moment you remember when you realised that?

Well, there were different phases, but I definitely wanted to be a drummer – you know, in an alternative rock band. But it was difficult to find people back then. I played in a band which was a trio, but when the bass guitarist bought roller skates he decided not to play bass anymore and the band split up. So I remember playing drums alone for a while, but there was no point. At the time, I really couldn’t imagine that a band could be just two people, or that I could play as a solo drummer. I always had this huge idea in my head: a band was a group with many people, playing at big venues, so I stopped playing drums at the age of 17.

Later on, we started Ślepcy Recordings which was kind of a record label, but we never really released anything. We started making music together, a kind of hardcore techno and electronic jazz. I'm not really sure what it was, but I was fascinated – this is sometime in the late 90s – by the possibility of making music on the computer. One big reason was the fact that the band didn’t work out, so the idea of making music that sounds full on your computer was kind of liberating.

I was taking different turns at the time too, I played on my own for a bit, but Lublin was a good place to be also because it’s a place where different folk and traditional music festivals happen. I wasn’t interested in huge rock festivals, but these smaller festivals with traditional music happened quite often on the side, so I would go to those.

The music I was making back then was kind of like MIDI jazz. I really liked doing it, and even if you listen back to some of the Ślepcy releases, they are these small two-minute MIDI jazz flute pieces in between these fast and furious gabber beats. And that’s funny because I’m kind of still into it.

Yeah, I was going to say that there’s definitely both of these elements present in your music: this folklore-type sensibility, as well as MIDI jazz playfulness.

It’s all there probably, yeah, but I don’t even think about it to be honest (laughs).

In a previous interview you mentioned you never want to make “difficult music”. At the same time, I feel like your music is rarely straightforward, often taking unexpected turns or incorporating unusual combinations of textures, instruments and sounds. How do you approach starting each new project?

There’s always a small concept or something like that which interests me, a spark of an idea, but then later I don’t follow any rules. I just follow the music and it just kind of evolves and opens up to me in a way. So there isn’t a big concept or a big experiment or something like that at the centre. I really just try to follow the music and it rarely takes me to any extreme. The music progresses naturally, I don’t want to complicate stuff on my own, just for the sake of it.

It’s always a bit difficult for me to talk about the music because I don’t really understand it to be honest (laughs). You know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I have some basic skills and through years of working on music I kind of know where to go or where to not go, how to not make the process more difficult for myself, so that I can finish a project.

I probably repeat this every time someone asks me about it, but I really try to keep this naive element in my music. To have this spontaneous, almost amateur approach to making music, even if it doesn’t always sound like that. I didn’t really evolve that much in the process to be honest, it still sounds like the early MIDI stages for me. I’m not sure if that makes sense.

Totally. That playfulness and lightness is definitely present in your music.

You know, music is probably one of the most important aspects of my life, but I really don’t want to keep it too serious. I also don’t think about myself as a serious creator. Every time I make music I try to put myself in the background and just have fun with whatever I’m doing at that moment, so maybe that’s also reflecting in the music. I like when humour is present too, and I don’t really like it when music and art in general gets too serious.

You have a new piece out on Longform Editions, could you tell me more about it?

It’s a mixture of things basically. I rarely have unfinished music, or extra tracks lying around once my albums are finished, but I have some very early sketches which I never really finished. When I create, I think in terms of an album, I can’t really make a single track, so sometimes I just abandon things as these sketches because they don’t fit with the album.

So when I was asked to work on a piece for Longform Editions I thought it was a good opportunity for me to go back to some of these unfinished sketches. When I go back to them, I often get very sentimental because they remind me of the time when I started working on them – they are basically like markers in my life – but with this one I really couldn’t remember where or when I started working on it, it was probably from a few years ago. It was a project without a name and I used it as an empty compartment that could be filled with other ideas I had lying around.

Do you have any other plans this coming year, whether it’s music releases or other projects?

There are some things I’m working on, performances and bigger-scale shows in the pipeline, but we’ll see. It’s probably too early for me to concretely mention them because I’m still at the early stages and I’m not sure where they’re heading or what I’ll do with them. So nothing is certain for this year yet.

I also wanted to ask you about your collaborations with more local labels like Mondoj, but then also releasing your music abroad with international labels. Do you feel any differences in this regard?

It’s important for me to work with people I can meet daily, and to know there will be a great ongoing collaboration. We’ve known each other for years with Janek and Paulina from Mondoj and we still have some plans together. I’m really happy and glad about this, they are from Warsaw too, I think this is a perfect match for me.

But I also like working with different labels, mostly because I love the process of working on an album with someone, especially when it gets people together. That’s how a friendship starts. I remember working with Lieven Mertens on the record for his label (Edições CN) and it sparked this great conversation which would span for over a year, and it wasn’t just a conversation about the music and the record. It always goes much much further, so this friendly and familiar contact is very important for me if I work with new labels. I’m also not great at sending demos around, because I really prefer to have some kind of previous relationship with the people I’m working with.

Earlier, you also mentioned that you became a father recently. How has having a son changed your life or how you approach making music?

Like I mentioned, I have to be more organised and focused, but it somehow works. I mean, I wasn’t really afraid that it might slow me down or anything. I had these few releases during the last few years, so nothing would even happen if I kind of disappeared for a while.

I’m really happy that I have a family. You know, something that gets me out of my studio. I love working on music and there are always ideas I want to try, but having a family is a big magnet, you know, something that gets me out of here and I don’t have to suffer on my own (laughs). Every day is different, and this works with my approach of not really thinking about myself too seriously – nothing happens if I skip some working days, it’s really not a problem, so I’m having a very good time.

I’m very happy to hear that. Was there anything else you wanted to mention in our conversation, or things we didn’t get to talk about?

Not really. Thank you!

Thank you!