Maciek Stasiowski talked with Józef Skrzek, the leader of SBB and the guest star of 2010 TWO RIVERSIDES opening concert.

MS: You composed music for Lech Majewski’s films. One of them, ‘The Roe’s Room’, is your joint project. Was it difficult to share your competences with each other?

JS: It’s not impossible, but you have to understand each other… make friends, communicate. Such people have enormous imagination…

Were there conflicts or compromises?

It was more of ‘co-acting’. The process of communicating is like waiting, which later becomes fulfillment. It develops with the course of events, up to a point where it doesn’t matter who is the author. This film is a collective effort, a composition compressing what is best in both of us.

I would like to talk now about the sources of inspiration. On one hand it’s church music, on the other there’s progressive rock. Are there any instrumentalists who have exerted peculiar influence on you?

Different things mater in composing music, let alone the nature. Too much inspiration can be dangerous; you have to be able to combine two things leaving alone the third one. What we plan to do as ‘Viator’ is to become wanderers. We meet as friends and it is very important because even tough there are different dynamics and communication in the artictic work, there must be a common goal.


Apart from music composed for film and theatre productions, you also created the soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’. In what ways does playing live music to an existing picture differ from regular composing?

It’s my personal way of comprehending the picture, these are sounds shaped on the basis of what I understand rather than on what I see. I create music ‘to the picture’ using my own chord grips, arrangements. I’m like a wandered who knows where he’s heading. The film itself serves as an inspiration for me, triggering and arousing particular emotions and sensitivity.


Any future plans for similar ‘live’ projects?

Maybe. I undertake projects of this kind very eagerly. I’m most effective ‘in action’. Playing music in theatres- where I have to adapt to the actors, and composing film music I discovered that the best situation for me is when I am a musician and composer at the same time, joining in the action and flowing with the tide. Of course it happens that I have to prepare the material earlier, then “package” it and present somehow. Nevertheless the mose surprising the outcome is, the more artistic it becomes.


The opening concert has been moved to the Large Market Square.