Darek Oleszkiewicz

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Darek "Oles" Oleszkiewicz (* 20th February 1963 in Breslau ) is a Polish jazz - bassist , composer and university lecturer .

biography

Oleszkiewicz had piano lessons at the state music school in his hometown when he was five. He later played guitar and electric bass before switching to double bass when he was eighteen . As a teenager he had played pop styles ranging from rock music, blues to jazz rock and jazz. In the early 1980s he performed at numerous jazz festivals and national competitions; In 1983 he was awarded first place for jazz composition and a second for ensemble playing at the jazz youth competition in Kraków . Then the saxophonist Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski brought him into his quartet. In the following years Oleszkiewicz worked in the bands of Zbigniew Namysłowski , Tomasz Szukalski , Henryk Majewski , Wojciech Karolak and Andrzej Jagodziński . In 1988 he moved to Los Angeles , where he studied with Charlie Haden on a scholarship at the California Institute of the Arts . After his graduation in 1992, he taught at the institute, played a. a. in the Los Angeles Jazz Quartet with Chuck Manning and directed various jazz ensembles; since 2002 he has been a professor at the University of California, Irvine .

In addition to his teaching activities, he worked with a number of American jazz musicians such as Brad Mehldau , Billy Higgins , Pat Metheny , Joe Lovano , Charles Lloyd , John Abercrombie , Bennie Maupin and Lee Konitz . In 2003 he was nominated for the Polish Fryderyk Music Prize in the category "Best Jazz Musician". In 2004 his debut album Like A Dream , which he recorded with Brad Mehldau and Bennie Maupin, was released on Cryptogramophone Records . In 2005 he was in readerpoll the European Jazz forum for best acoustic bass player selected. With Adam Czerwiński he recorded the duo album RainDance , with Peter Erskine and Alan Pasqua the trio album The Interlochen Concert (2010).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Oleszkiewicz, Darek
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oles, Draek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish jazz musician and composer
DATE OF BIRTH 20th February 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw