Joanna Bruzdowciz In Memoriam Œuvres Pour Piano Jocz - Ap0436 - Contemporary

The whole year 2017 was a hard time for me. Jürgen Tittel – my husband and a great companion for 43 years – died in July after a devastating illness. He used to accompany all my career as an artist – always present, helpful and supportive, the first critic and admirer of my music. Every artist needs someone near and dear by their side in moments of creative anxiety and Jürgen was always there for me. However, my husband, to whom I dedicated one of the pieces from the record, is not the only one who has already departed from this world. The beautiful graphic on the cover is the work of Zbylut Grzywacz, a magnificent artist, member of the ‘Wprost’ group, who was born in 1939 and died in 2004. In the 70’s we were both in Paris as grant holders and in December 1971, after a concert of my music and the exhibition of Zbylut paintings in a beautiful Polish Embassy building, we were both considered ‘dissidents’ by the Soviet ambassador! Zbylut’s paintings explicitly pointed at the lack of freedom of speech (the workers with mouths bricked in, crucified against a red, communist flag!), whereas my piece for tape Le Souffle (The Breath) was dedicated to Solzhenitsyn (at that time imprisoned in Russia) using original Solzhenitsyn’s text. All this, of course, met with strong Soviet Ambassador’s disapproval, and the Polish Ambassador, mister Olechowski, was severely criticized by our ‘fraternal’ nation.