Hilarious Disasters - Jazz Juniors Competition 2023

Hilarious Disasters is a new project launched several months ago by Ukrainian pianist Kateryna Ziabliuk (Zyablyuk). All of the band members also play in various well-known groups in Poland. Apart from Kateryna’s own compositions, they perform her arrangements of little-known folk pieces. The music of Hilarious Disasters has strongly been inspired by Ukrainian folk and free jazz. As in those genres, the band members explore the possibilities of free improvisation within a loose compositional framework. The group’s energy, which they strive to retain, derives from their steadfast love of life, of surprising one another with every performance, and expressing feelings from the most difficult part of the emotional spectrum through their playing and musical jokes.

Band members:
Kateryna Ziabliuk – piano
Alex Clov – tenor saxophone
Łukasz Jankowski – flute, alto saxophone
Mikołaj Sikora – bass
Piotr Szałajko – drums

Kateryna Ziabliuk
A pianist, improviser, and composer from Kiev. She studied in Katowice, Cracow, and
Milan. While drawing on the language of modern jazz in her music, she does not hesitate to explore elements of traditional music and the cultural heritage of her homeland at the same time. 2019 saw the recording by Kateryna and her trio of an improvised suite titled Lisova Pisnya (Song of the Wood) based on a poem by Lesya Ukrainka. At the 2022 JazzArt Festival in Katowice, Ziabliuk performed another version of this work in a duo with leading Polish singer Natalia Kordiak. This performance gave rise to the TANŌK project. Kateryna’s solo piano album Live at the Enjoy Jazz Festival (2020) garnered fine reviews in the Europe Jazz Network and All About Jazz charts. The artist is part of many regular and one-time (festival) projects presented, among others, with members of the Australian Art Orchestra, SonCe Trio, Lumpeks, Unleashed Cooperation, The Black Sea Songs, zygmunt pauker trio, and O.N.E Quartet (hailed as one of the most interesting phenomena in the Polish jazz scene in the last decade). Kateryna has given numerous performances throughout Europe (including the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, and Italy). Her concert schedule has intensified in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as she has consciously chosen to act as an ambassador of Ukrainian culture in the West.
Ziabliuk is a co-founder and editor of the meloport.com website, where she publishes texts on improvised music.
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Recorded at the Jazz Juniors Competition 2023 / Cricoteka, Kraków

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