Piotr Baron

Bio

Piotr Baron was born on January 5th, 1961, in Wrocław. He didn't complete his formal musical education until 2005, when he was the oldest student to be granted a Masters of Arts at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław. He is nonetheless one of the most important figures in Polish jazz.

He made his debut in 1977, and by 1978 he had already won an award as a soloist at the Jazz Festival over the Oder River / Jazz nad Odrą. Two years later, he won the prize for second place at the same festival. In 1984, he won the Grand Prix for a soloist at the San Sebastian Festival "Jazz Aldia" in Spain.

Baron has recorded over 60 albums with Art Farmer, Eddie Henderson, Victor Lewis and John Hicks. He has six solo albums – Take One (1995), Tango (1996), Blue Rain (1997), Bogurodzica (2000) and Reference (2004), recorded in New York. Playing tenor sax, he is the co-founder of the cult band Travelling Birds Quintet, with Cezary Konrad on drums, Darek Oleszkiewicz on bass, Kuba Stankiewicz on the piano and Piotr Wojtasik playing trumpet and flugelhorn. Since 1988 he has performed occasionally with symphonies and chamber orchestras, playing a jazz, entertainment and modern repertoire.

Baron has conducted musical workshops in Chodzież, Pułtusk, Puławy, Lwów (Ukraine) and Prague (the Czech Republic). Since 1998 he has taught saxophone and theoretical jazz at the Jazz and Entertainment Music School in Wrocław (I and II grade), at the Zielona Góra University (since 2001) and at the State Higher Professional School in Nysa (since 2008). He wrote a handbook called Technical School of the Saxophone and a book, Jazz Etudes. He has lectured at universities in the USA and in Turkey. Baron also works as a critic and publicist for Jazz Forum Magazine and Diapazon.pl. Since 1994 he has presented his own weekly radio program on Radio Wrocław. As a jazz musician, he was nominated twice for the Fryderyk Prize (also known as "the Polish Grammy"), in 2000 and 2004, and his Bogurodzica also received a nomination in the category "Jazz Record of the Year 2000." Famous Polish musicians with whom Baron has worked include: Urszula Dudziak, Michał Urbaniak, Zbigniew Namysłowski and Tomasz Stańko. He has also collaborated with Ray Charles, Art Farmer, Al Porcino, Billy Harper and David Murray. For his thirty years of artistic accomplishment, Piotr Baron was honoured with the Brown Medal "Meritorious for Culture Gloria Artis", and with the Honorary Award of the Polish Jazz Society.