Date of Birth

Mini Biography

One of the most innovative and important Polish musicians of all time, Jozef Skrzek was born in Siemianowice, on 2nd July 1948. In 1967, he graduated from High School of Music in piano class and started performing as a soloist. After his father's death, he started playing in several rock bands. In 1970, he broke his hand while performing one of etudes, and decided to cease his career as a classical pianist. He joined Polish's best group at this time Tadeusz Nalepa's Breakout, as a pianist and a bassist.

In 1971, he met two musicians, Anthimos Apostolis, guitarist of Greek origin, and drummer Jerzy Piotrowski, and they started rehearsing as a trio named SBB (Silesian Blues Band). Later this year, they were invited by Polish musical icon, Czeslaw Niemen. The three albums they recorded together - "Strange Is This World", "Marionetki" (originally titled "Vol.1/Vol.2" - the title "Marionetki" was given to the CD reissue) and "Ode To Venus" - still remain One of the most important, bright, innovative and brilliant albums in the whole history of rock.

In 1972, Niemen and his musicians were playing at the Rock And Jazz Now concert in Munich, on the bill were also Charles Mingus and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Skrzek often stated how enlightened he was when he saw Mahavishnu live. That Music, combining musical virtuosity and improvisational skills, thrilled him and his two companions.

In 1973 Skrzek and Niemen decided to take different roads. Jozef, Anthimos and Jerzy returned to the name SBB, which now meant "Szukaj, Burz, Buduj" ("Search, Break & Build"). Their initial concert under this name was on 2 February 1974 in Krakow.

On 18-19 April 1974 the band gave two sold-out concerts at the Stodola Club in Warsaw. The shows were recorded and a LP, entitled simply "live", was released later this year and got overwhelming reception. Incredible powerful, dynamical Music played with indescribable virtuosity and high improvisational skills remains excellent today, 30 years after the album's release, and Skrzek's piano, electric bass and mouth organ solos are still fantastically perfect. SBB played several gigs in Western Germany and the audience were delighted. The press described the Band as "ground-breaking" and compared SBB to the greatest rock band of that time. In 1975, the band was touring across Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and also gave some gigs in Sweden (Karlstad concert on 13 May was released as a CD). The set consisted of improvisations mainly, and the band was stealing the show no matter who they were playing with.

"live" album was oriented towards jazz-rock with Blues flavour, the next album, "Nowy Horyzont" (New Horizon) was still a solid jazz-rock album with great Moog synthesizer parts. On their third One, "Pami

Jozef Skrzek Group (Польша/Россия) ...

Music by Majewski, Jozef Skrzek.