Marcin Masecki & Boleros

A big band with a touch of jungle, classic boleros in a symphonic-cinematic arrangement, Latin energy intertwined with Slavic melancholy – this is not a concert you can predict. Marcin Masecki returns with his new project, Boleros y Masecki, expanding the classic jazz trio into a nine-piece orchestra that sounds like the soundtrack to a non-existent film from the 1950s. And all of it – as is always the case with Masecki – is infused with a personal story: a childhood spent in Colombia, a marriage to an Argentinian woman, and a love for what is sincere, beautiful, and slightly absurd in music.

Marcin Masecki is a pianist, composer, and arranger who moves with equal ease in the worlds of classical and jazz music, as well as between the score and improvisation. Already as a teenager, he impressed audiences and jurors. In 2005, he won the Grand Prix at the International Jazz Piano Competition in Moscow. He studied at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. Still, he returned to Poland with an unrestrained appetite for experimentation.

As an artist, Masecki does not recognize stylistic boundaries – he has played alongside Tomasz Stańko and with the band Pink Freud, co-created Paristetris, recorded the sounds of Warsaw with a tape recorder, and turned baroque fugues into street performances. He composes film music (including for Pawlikowski’s Cold War), performs solo, with orchestras, and in the most unusual ensembles imaginable. In each of these incarnations, he combines ease with mastery and ironic distance with genuine delight in music.

The Boleros y Masecki project is his tribute to the tradition of Latin music he has experienced since childhood – he knows it not from records, but from the streets and homes of Colombia. The bolero – a sentimental love song – in his arrangements gains a new dimension: it becomes material for an epic suite, a cinematic miniature, a jazz impression. It is not only a personal project but also an original formal experiment – something between a big band, a dance orchestra, and a chamber ensemble with an exotic flair.

That evening at the Philharmonic, there will be neither classical music, nor jazz, nor world music – and yet all of it will be present. Masecki and his musicians will take us on a journey into the world of the bolero, which in their version sounds both new and familiar. Warm, soft harmonies, unobtrusive grooves, and that characteristic smile under the nose – this is precisely the kind of concert you need in autumn.


Bésame Mucho from the album Boleros y Masecki (album release September 2025):