Strycharski, Dominik

Born in 1975, Polish composer, recorder player, vocalist, improviser and writer. He is essentially self-taught in each of these domains, but has studied musical education at the Silesian University in Cieszyn. His vast output includes concerts and one-off events spanning from jazz and improvised music through experimental, noise, club, and postdance to theatre music. He plays and composes modern jazz in many electric and acoustic versions, modern, electronic, theatre music, postrap, noise as well as many varieties of improvised music, with his own ensembles Pulsarus, Organic Panic, and Prophetic Fall. He is one of the few recorder players practising jazz and experimental improvised music. He is also one of the first Polish experimental vocalists to feature extended electronics. He has published over 20 CDs with his own and collaborative projects, performed primarily by the Pulsarus ensemble but also Rhplus, BandFx, and Progrram/Kostas New Progrram. He has contributed music to a large number of theatre productions directed by Michał Zadara (The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys, Ifigenia, Awantura Warszawska, Muzyka z pozostałości, November Night, Actor), Wojciech Klemm, Łukasz Kos (Krwawa jatka, Starość jest piękna, Janosik, Kajtuś Czarodziej, Między nami dobrze jest), Katarzyna Raduszyńska (Wieczór Trzech Króli, A Nie z Zielonego Wzgórza, The Marriage of Figaro, Nowy Don Kichot, Cudowne morderczynie), Jan Peszek (Wroniec, SLO), Wojtek Urbański (Zabójca, Marzenie Nataszy), Grażyna Kania (W mrocznym, mrocznym domu), Natalia Sołtysik (Szarańcza, Lem Cyberiada – czytanie), and Michał Siegoczyński. He has cooperated with theatres such as the National Theatre in Warsaw, Stary in Cracow, Współczesny in Wrocław, Warsaw and Szczecin, Nowy in Łódź, Studio, Powszechny and Ateneum in Warsaw, and many others.

For more than a decade, Dominik Strycharski has run experimental vocal workshops in which he combines the development of vocal self-awareness with teamwork. The voice is treated as an instrument and improvisation as the main tool of human creativity. He has also created Doministry, a multidimensional solo project uniting modern electronic, performance, and electroambient music, based on the electronic transformation of the voice and improvisation open to all possible influences.

He was one of the first Polish musicians to practise live club acts. For nearly twenty years, he has cooperated with DJs; he was one of the first to introduce turntables as a performance medium. Since 2001, he has also cocreated the Bretoncaffe Theatre as a composer and performer.