The first incarnation of the project, presented in 2003 and then reprised at the 2004 Musica Polonica Nova festival, brought together a roster of classical and jazz musicians (in addition to composers Agata Zubel, Rafał Augustyn, Marcin Bortnowski, Cezary Duchnowski, and Ryszard Osada, participants included Piotr Baron, Piotr Dziubek, and Piotr Wojtasik). The current incarnation combines the classical/contemporary (academic) and the traditional/folk/exotic.

The leading figure is Maciej Kaziński, a multi-instrumentalist and authority on early Greek and Byzantine music, member of Węgajty Theater Schola and Orkiestra Czasów Zarazy, director of the Song of Our Roots festival in Jarosław, early and ethnic music practitioner, and composer. European and Asian instruments from his rich collection form the backbone of the concert. Participants also include composers/performers Agata Zubel (vocals and percussion instruments), Cezary Duchnowski (piano and electronics), Rafał Augustyn (voice and keyboard), and drummer Karol Papała, who – like Agata Zubel – is part of the team of artists who have brought to the stage Cezary Duchnowski’s opera Marta’s Garden. (The next performance is scheduled for December 7 at the Wrocław Opera House).

Double Exposure vol. 2, references Renaissance and Baroque instrumental forms such as fantasia, ricercar, suite of dances, and chaconna. Individual composers are responsible for “their” section of work, but the whole thing is a group creation – a journey to the land of old sound – though there are no direct quotes or stylized music (these are not “old dances and melodies”!). The old sound and rhythms may prove surprisingly fresh, and the old forms perfectly in tune with today’s musical sensibilities and expression. This is why they are combined with electronics – a sign of our times and a medium that has now become an extremely flexible and humanized tool. Equally modern is the co-existence of score and improvisation, formula and imagination, which, paradoxically, has been lost in a large part of 20th-century music. In this sense Double Exposure vol. 2 is not basically different from vol. 1 – there are numerous similarities between how early-classical and traditional music is now performed, and the same can be said about contemporary “classical” music and jazz.

But there are differences too. A typical classical musician studies one instrument for years, sometimes branching out into related instruments – viola for violinists, harpsichord for piano players, saxophone for clarinet players – all this to perform a learned repertory, highly varied though it is. In turn the traditional musician combines fire and water. There is either a long, often life-long or even generation-spanning, refinement of a concrete technique of playing a chosen, highly specialized instrument, or an instrument closest to hand is grabbed to be played with a concrete technique and style, but with no virtuoso ambitions.

Or both.