The Zastawny Folk Band was founded in 2014 on the initiative of Leszek, Jan and Jakub Zastawny. The inspiration for its formation was the multi-generational tradition of musicianship in their family. Currently it is played by a grandson (Jakub) with his grandfather (Leszek). The rest of the band is made up of the Zastawnys’ friends – great musicians who love folklore: Józef Śliwa, Wojciech Wójcik and Adam Chudy.

The band’s repertoire includes authentic melodies played at old weddings and parties in the vicinity of Brzostek Commune, Jasło and Dębica in the Subcarpathian region. The main goal the band has set for itself is to perform the oldest, archaic melodies in the form in which our ancestors performed them.

The lineup of the band playing at this year’s autumn edition of the Festival:
Jakub Zastawny – fiddle prima
Leszek Zastawny – clarinet
Wojciech Wójcik – fiddle second
Adam Chudy – double bass
Grzegorz Stokłosa – vocals

NAME: MS³ (pronounced ‘em es three’ or ‘em es to the third’) – Maria Stępień trio; MS² is a place for contemporary art – MS³ is a space for contemporary folk art; the third – our own dimension of folk music.

A chamber ensemble formed from the meeting of three musical personalities who have been practising traditional Polish dance music for years. Modelled on archival recordings of old rural masters, contemporary musicians interpret folk melodies through the prism of their own sensitivity, while preserving their dance rhythm. The band’s performance is based on lively improvisation and spontaneous interaction, reviving the old repertoire.

Line-up:
Maria Stępień – violin
Patryk Petersson – bass
Gabriel Prusinowski – baraban

DvaTry is a band from Kyiv and the surrounding area that performs traditional Ukrainian instrumental music, which was once danced to in rural areas. The band’s main goal is to bring this music back into contemporary everyday life so that it is not seen merely as the heritage of past generations.

The band’s repertoire mainly includes musical traditions from the Dnieper and Polissya regions.

Melodies from the village of Mushni in the Rivne Oblast, which were immortalised on their debut album ‘The Village of Mushni’, occupy a special place.

The band members are:
Maria Kononchuk – first violin
Zachar Davydenko – second violin
Herman Klymenko – baraban/drum

photo: Alina Shvydko

The INTROIT initiative was founded in 2022 in Olsztyn by Robert Burdalski. It arose from the need to deepen the practice of singing post-liturgical services for the dead and penitential psalms in order to be able to sing and celebrate the funerals of loved ones.

INTROIT restores to practice services, songs and psalms sung for the dead, Advent and Lent. It strives to find their practical context.

“We sing and restore to practice devotions and songs from old 19th-century songbooks (Śpiewnik Mioduszewskiego, Śpiewnik Pelpliński) to melodies that have survived in small rural communities in Podlasie and Lubelszczyzna. We know them from funeral singers and from archival recordings from the 1950s and 1970s. Our intention is to sing and pray for the deceased members of our families and all those who need it.”

INTROIT operates at the Parish of Christ the King of the Universe in Olsztyn, thanks to the openness and kindness of the parish priest, Franciscan Brother Cordian Szwarc OFM. Thank you!

INTROIT consists of:
Robert Burdalski – cantor, singing, substantive guidance and overall coordination
Marta Urban-Burdalska – singing, organisation
Piotr Spychała – singing
Dariusz Biryło – singing
Krzysztof Łączkowski – singing

 

In the years 2022–2025, INTROIT was co-created by:
Jakub Maślanka, Agnieszka Krajewska-Werecka, Łucja Pawłowska, Ewa Krasińska, Angelika Stawisińska, Marta Jaśkowska, Milena Waśkiewicz, Iwona Myszko.

A dedicated ethnologist and researcher of Polish folk traditions, she learned her craft directly from rural singers, dancers, and musicians. A driving force in the folk music scene, she co-founded the Toruń-based group n obrotów and the Polish Traditional Music Forum, and co-created the Traditional Games Laboratory. She performs as a bassist and singer in the trio Zedel / Domachowska / Rosik.

She explores and shares Polish folk music through dance events, concerts, workshops, and singing gatherings. She also works in education and event production at the Maria Znamierowska-Prüffer Ethnographic Museum in Toruń.

She likes things to rhyme and keep time.

Robert Budalski (born in 1974 in Morąg) – funeral singer from Olsztyn, researcher and traditional musician playing the baraban and bass drums. He has 25 years of experience in field research, documentation and practice of male singing traditions (ritual songs, spring songs, funeral songs, Lent songs, Marian songs, post-liturgical devotions – chaplets, rosaries, litanies) from Podlasie and Roztocze, as well as traditional instrumental music from central Poland.

He co-founded the Podróżniczy Kolektyw Skrzypcowy group, the Zawiejok Brothers Band, the Memento Mori Dance Club, and the Men’s Company from Olsztyn. He was a student of Jan Gaca, a funeral singer from Podlasie: Jan Szklarzewski, Jan Komosa and Józef Niemotko. He has participated in projects involving in-depth research into traditional music and culture (including Serce Dzwonu [Heart of the Bell] by the TRATWA Association and projects by the Knyszyn Cultural Centre).

He leads the INTROIT group in Olsztyn, whose aim is to restore traditional religious singing and sung post-liturgical services to the community’s practice as prayer (2022 – present). This is currently his main path of creative development.

Recipient of a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2025 – an artistic scholarship in the field of folk culture entitled ‘Songs of Podlasie’. Designer and builder of Christmas carol stars.

An experimental project straddling the border between the world of traditional music, early music, and the individual musical experience of the band members, exploring the connections between Polish traditional religious singing and the dance music of the past centuries.

The phrases of devotional songs, which until recently have still been sung in the villages of lowland Poland, echo with polonaises and mazurkas which once accompanied dances and later served as musical base for religious texts by poets of varying fame. The Memento Mori Dance Club project explores contexts and circumstances in which these two seemingly contradictory layers of instrumental dance music and contemplative religious texts can coexist.

Members:
Maciej Żurek – violin, singing, artistic director
Antek Hasso-Agopsowicz – violin, singing
Jacek Muża – tuba, soprano saxophone, kaval, singing
Wolfgang Niklaus – oud, cobza, violin
Serhij Petryczenko – double bass, singing
Piotr Piszczatowski – reed organ, violin, singing,
Marek Szwajkowski – baraban, frame drum, singing
Witek Wojciechowski – violin, singing

Andrzej Bieńkowski (born 1946) is a painter, ethnographer and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Since 1980, during his trips to the countryside, he has accumulated an impressive private ethnographic archive containing thousands of audio and video recordings and photographs from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.

Author of documentary films The Last Rural Musicians, Jewish Music in the Memory of Rural Musicians, Ukraine, In Search of Pagan Rituals, Musicians Gace from Radom region, and a series of short films popularising rural music (together with Monika Mencina). Author of the books The Last Rural Musicians – People, Customs, Music (Prószyński i S-ka 2001, Muzyka Odnaleziona 2012), Sold Music (Czarne, 2007), 1000 Kilometres of Music. Warsaw-Kiev (MCKiS 2009), publications in the Muzyka Odnaleziona series (Muzyka Odnaleziona publishing house, since 2007).

Winner of the Oskar Kolberg Award in 1995 and the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award in 2008. In 2014, he received the Gloria Artis Silver Medal for his work.
Source: www.muzykaodnaleziona.pl

Since 2015, during the autumn festivals of Wszystkie Mazurki Świata (Mazurkas of the World), Andrzej Bieńkowski has been organising concerts from the Kanon Trzech (Canon of Three) series. In them, he presents outstanding figures of Polish traditional music – he reminisces and shows his own film documentation of his meetings with them. He invites young performers and continuators to participate in the concerts.

Słodkie Fascynacje perform music from the Łęczyca region, drawing on archives and their own field research. Their repertoire is mainly based on the work of Tadeusz Kubiak from Mchowice. The band’s sweet name comes from… a box of chocolates brought in once by Joanna Gancarczyk and Joanna Skowrońska – the band’s good spirits.

The trio consists of Marcin Lorenc, Krzysztof Kubiak and Joanna Wolańska.

Marcin Lorenc – violinist, animator, journalist. Fascinated by the traditional music of central Poland, especially from the Łęczyca, Opoczno and Sieradz regions. He studied with rural violin masters, including Tadeusz Kubiak, whose son is Krzysztof Kubiak – accordionist of Słodkie Fascynacje. The gentlemen met through the master of Marcin Lorenc when he came to study.

Then, at one of the dance parties, the last member of the trio, Joanna Wolańska, spontaneously joined Marcin and Krzysztof on the baraban. The dance-loving lecturer at the Academy of Music in Łódź is a choreographer with rhythm in her blood.

During The Canon of Three concert the band will perform with the following line-up:
Marcin Lorenc – violin
Joanna Wolańska – baraban

photo: Joanna Gancarczyk

Stanisław Pawlik, born in 1944 – drum with a stick

Zenon Kucharski, born in 1948 – Polish accordion

Both men have been associated with the cultural centre in Brzeziny for several decades. Zenon Kucharski, a polish accordion player, runs an organ workshop and is a designer searching for new sounds. He has played with all the local wedding musicians and is an expert on the local wedding repertoire.

Bronisław Pawlik, a drummer in the Brzeziny band, has played with such legendary figures as Leon Lewandowski and Józef Antczak. Both are winners of many local and national competitions.