After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet (Unloved, Three Crowns), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disciplines makes Dominik Wania one of the most distinctive players of his generation. Lonely Shadows is a testimony to his creative originality as well as a significant addition to ECM’s celebrated line of solo piano recordings. Produced by Manfred Eicher.
Dominik Wania was born in 1981 in Sanok in Southern Poland’s Podkarpacie region, and started playing piano when he was three years old. He subsequently studied in Kraków and graduated from its Academy of Music in 2005. Jazz was also a presence in his life from an early age and in 2006 he won a scholarship to study it at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where his teachers included Danilo Perez, Jerry Bergonzi, Ran Blake and George Garzone. His debut recording as a leader, Ravel, released in 2013