Marcin Masecki was born in 1982 in Warsaw, Poland. At age 3 he started training with his father and at 7 took up the piano. He quickly showed interest in improvisation, and by 12 he was a regular at the legendary Polish jazz club "Akwarium". A year later he formed a piano trio and over the next years played frequently in clubs and entered three competitions, winning second place at the 1997 Jazz Sarteano Competition in Siena, Italy, and first place in two competitions in Poland. At 15 Masecki joined the much larger Polish jazz group "Alchemik" and co-wrote most of their output, which was recorded on four CDs. The group enjoyed great success for several years, playing in jazz festivals and clubs all over Europe. At 16 Masecki won the award for "Best Soloist" at the Jazz Hoeilaart Competition in Brussels (1999) while Alchemik won first place. That same year he was voted by Poland's main jazz magazine (Jazz Forum) as the year's "greatest hope for the future of Polish jazz." Meanwhile he was working intensely on classical music. At 15 he entered the Fryderyk Chopin Music School in Warsaw on a dual major - Jazz and Classical. A year later he performed Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with the Kielce Symphony Orchestra. At 18 he gave his music school graduation recital held at the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw. He continued his studies on a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 2 1/2 years. During his stay there he formed the trio TAQ with Garth Stevenson on bass and Ziv Ravitz on drums. Upon his return to Warsaw he married, and re-entered the Polish jazz world. In 2005 he entered the Moscow International Jazz Piano Competition and won first place. In Warsaw he got particularly involved in the free improvisational scene as well as intense research into 18th century music, culminating in the building of his own clavichord (predecessor of the piano). In the summer of 2006, at 24, he organized a 6-day festival under his name in which he played every night in a different setting - the first concert was Bach's Viola da Gamba Sonatas and the last was a free jazz quartet. That same year Masecki started working with the DJ collective "Innocent Sorcerers". Together with trumpet player Tomasz Stanko they have performed at various festivals, including the Heineken Open'er Fest in Gdynia. Other bands he has worked with include Pink Freud, Zbigniew Wegehaupt Quartet, Muzykoterpia, Mitch & Mitch, and artists include Michal Urbaniak, Dave Samuels, George Garzone, and Candelaria Saenz Valiente, among many others. He regularly performs solo improvised concerts as well, recently opening for the Branford Marsalis Quartet. This summer he will also be opening for the Wynton Marsalis Orchestra in the Warsaw Jazz Summer Days festival. His first solo album is scheduled for release in September 2007 on the label LADO ABC. At the beginning of 2007, in search of artistic adventure, he moved to London, where he now lives. www.marcinmasecki.com
