Courtesy of Adam Makowicz

You may be familiar with the whimsical ballads of Romantic music. Or maybe you’re more versed with
the titillating adventures of jazz.

Or, like Adam Makowicz, you may know an amalgamation of both, inviting the Romantic music to extend beyond its measured structure, embodying jazz in all its expression and unrestraint.

Makowicz recently graced Indonesia with his presence, playing at Chopin’s bicentenary celebrations at the Jakarta Playhouse, Central Jakarta.

He entertained the audience with his jazz-appropriated Chopin such as Fantaisie Impromptu No. 4 en do dièse mineur (Opus 66), Preludes No. 2 3 4 (Opus 28) a mazurka and a ballade.

Polish-American Makowicz grew up with the sounds of Frédéric Chopin in his home, so it seems only natural that the musician carry through the music he was introduced to as a child, even if in an unconventional fashion.

Born in 1940 in Czechoslovakia and raised in Poland, Makowicz’s early childhood tends to parallel with the genius Chopin, also of Polish nationality.

Just as Chopin was regarded a child prodigy, Makowicz, who began learning classical music at
the age of six, was considered an especially talented child in his community.

It was not until Makowicz was 15, however, that he was seduced by the sounds of jazz.

A contested music form in communist Poland where music from the West was deemed ashamedly indulgent, jazz had only a place in Poland’s underbelly. However, this did not stop him.

Jazz soon became the music he abandoned everything for, he said, including his family and education.

“My life is the world of freedom and improvisation,” Makowicz told The Jakarta Post shortly after his performance at the Jakarta Playhouse. “Jazz knocks me down. I’ve always had Chopin in my life but jazz is at my core.”

He added that another reason Chopin figured in his repertoire was because he grew up listening to the Romantic musician and shared the same nationality.

“Whether you’re Scandinavian and have grown up with Nordic folk music, or Russian and have grown up listening to Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, people are influenced by the music in their worlds,” the Krakow Chopin Conservatory of Music graduate said.

However, he also took a great interest in Chopin’s music because it had the propensity for jazz appropriation more than other classical musicians.

“Some people have asked me to improvise using Bach, but you can’t do that with him,” he
said. “Chopin wrote so many beautiful melodies that follow the conventions of pop music, a form made perfectly for adopting to other genres.”

Pop music, designed to appeal to the general audience, is noted for being more accessible, inheriting simplified musical characteristics such as its chord structures and rhythm, which lends itself to be more easily modified than complex, progressive techniques.

“I have extracted some of the most major or simpler melodies of Chopin and improvised around them,” he said. “I incorporated my vision into the melody. Chopin probably wouldn’t like it. But I’m free to do it – and it works.”

Living in a time and place where culture was constricted, Makowicz managed to find himself a regular gig at a Krakow jazz cellar, leading the life of a struggling musician.

Persistence paid, however. In 1977, Makowicz started gaining significant international exposure.

During this time, he was named the number one jazz pianist in Europe by publication Jazz Forum and producer and talent-scout John Hammond invited Makowicz on a 10-week tour of the US.

He played at some of the most esteemed concert halls including Carnegie Hall and Greenwich Village Cookery Club, New York, in the US. His first album, Adam, was made soon after.

But as his career came together, he experienced a separation from his home country. In 1980, Makowicz was banned from Poland when it imposed a martial law on the country.

Despite being cut from his home ties, Makowicz continued to focus on music. He moved to
Toronto, Canada, touring and performing with groups such as the National Symphony Orchestra,
the Warsaw Philharmonic, the National Symphony in Washington, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, major concert halls across Europe and now in
Indonesia.

The musician has more than 30 albums spanning genres of classical, pop and jazz, and he has played with some of jazz’s most notables including Herbie Hancock, Sarah Vaughan, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines.

“I mightn’t be able to play my Romantic-jazz form at a classical concert, but that doesn’t take away from the fact they are wrapped in feeling.”

He hunches over the piano, his face reposed, his body still — apart from his hands dancing over
the keys.

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