Josef Kowalsky is an instrumental jazz project whose leader and composer is Amsterdam-based bass player, Marta Golka. The band came together in early 2022 to breathe life into the ideas from Marta’s master research on incorporating elements of progressive metal into jazz.

Rhythmical complexities started to intertwine with catchy harmonies and Marta, being a fan of Franz Kafka’s, saw an analogy to the skilful mixture of darkness and absurd in his writing. It seemed only fitting to have the band named after the main character of Kafka’s iconic novel “The Trial.”

Josef Kowalsky is a 5-piece band featuring alto saxophone, guitar, piano, bass and drums. Their music is characterised by an abundance of odd and changing metres, but with great emphasis on strong melodies and groove, which makes the music approachable despite its complexity. The band has just recorded their debut EP which will come out in Autumn 2023.

With this project I am exploring the interconnection between jazz and the music of my youth: punk, rhythm-and-blues, pop and many other genres. I am very much drawn to the boundaries of jazz as an art form. How can I use different musical elements from the pop world, in the broadest sense of the word, in a "jazz setting"? How far can I stylistically step out of the "jazz framework" as a jazz musician without completely abandoning it?

I would like to go back to the music I grew up with and give it a clear place in my own work.

Eargonauts

“Once upon a time in a distant corner of the universe... 

An asteroid drifted aimlessly throughout the cosmos, across the aeons and into our galaxy, eventually colliding with a planet ruled by a primal order and chaos. This cataclysmic event, in turn, sent a chunk of the Earth into space, which eventually became the moon, but it also created something else...

It created THE EARGONAUT, the funkiest cosmic body in our galaxy.

Now, millennia later, The Eargonauts, the inhabitants of the Eargonaut (the oddly ear-shaped planetoid), drift together in the void of space attuned to the frequencies of the cosmos.

These sonic sorcerers beam their interstellar melodies of contemporary jazz masterfully mixed with a wide range of genres down to Earth as a gift for all. Feel the gravity of their groove.

They are the Eargonauts, and they come in peace.”  - Chris Wallace



Eargonauts was a contemporary jazz project led by guitarist and composer Ante Medic and drummer Domen Cizej.