Atom String Quartet

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Kasia Stanczyk

Poland's premiere jazz fusion quartet brings its majestic and classically-influenced style to Madison, courtesy of the UW-Madison Polish Student Association. The band blends the technicality that stringed instruments require with dizzying improvisations and creates breathtaking music on their recent release, Supernova. Constantly teetering between order and chaos, ASQ compose music the way engineers create roller coasters.

press release: As the part of their first U.S. tour, Atom String Quartet will perform mix of their own compositions, folk music inspired tunes, Polish jazz classics by jazz violinist Zbigniew Seifert as well pieces by classical composers by Witold Lutoslawski and Krzysztof Penderecki.

The concert is organized and sponsored by Polish Student Association of UW-Madison,  Polish Heritage Club of Madison and Mad-PolKA Foundation with financial support from German, Nordic and Slavic Department of UW-Madison and Lapinski Fund. This concert is a one of the two live shows in Madison which are being part of the 3rd Edition of the Chicago-based "Chopin IN the City" Festival.  The festival is organized by Sound and Notes Foundation and aims at presenting Poland's most interesting contemporary musicians as well as Polish music performed by foreign musicians. In its 3rd year is expending its reach beyond Chicagoland to allow music fans in Madison to appreciate richness of Poland's contemporary musical scene.

Atom String Quartet is one of the most intriguing string quartets in the world, and also one of best Polish jazz bands. The group combines the capabilities of a classic string quartet (i.e. two violins, viola and cello) with strong improvisational skills in the jazz idiom, which in turn allows them to develop their distinctive new sound and establish their own original style. Their style, strongly based in jazz, also includes Polish folk, music of various regions of the world, as well chamber, contemporary and classical music.

The quartet was established in Warsaw in 2010, and was formed by two violinists: Dawid Lubowicz and Mateusz Smoczyński, the violist – Michał Zaborski and cellist – Krzysztof Lenczowski.

All of them graduated from Warsaw Frederic Chopin University of Music.

One of the members of the group:  violinist  Mateusz Smoczynski performed solo jazz concert and improvised with local jazz musicians during the show at North Street Cabaret in Madison in June 2018.

The group recorded four original CDs: “Fade In” – which received the Polish music award “Fryderyk” for Jazz Debut of the Year (2011), “Places” (2012) – which won “Fryderyk” for Album of the Year – Jazz (2012) and “AtomSPHERE” (2015) .

In 2017 the band released its fourth album - "Seifert" containing compositions of the renowned Polish jazz violinist – Zbigniew Seifert with interpretations of the quartet’s musicians.

That year two other CDs were released as a result of groups collaboration with other musicians: "Live" recording with Zakopower (Polish folk-pop group) and “Made in Poland” recorded with Leopoldinum Orchestra, which included compositions of Karol Szymanowski, Grażyna Bacewicz and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, as well as Krzysztof Lenczowski (“Iława” and “Namysłowiak”) and Dawid Lubowicz (“Ballad on the Death of Janosik”).

The CD was awarded “Fryderyk 2017” for Album of the Year Symphonic and Concert Music.

Atom String Quartet will be presenting examples all of its various projects and style variations during their live show in Madison.

The quartet cooperated with such artists as: Branford Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin, Gil Goldstein, Vladislav “Adzik” Sendecki, Mino Cinelu, Paolo Fresu, Leszek Możdżer, Lars Danielsson, Zohar Fresco,.