The last time the great Polish pianist Adam Makowicz played Chicago, he recalls, personal computers were new, the Internet was marginal and his native country had just been liberated from Communism.
That was back in 1990, and Makowicz made a much-anticipated appearance at the Jazz Showcase, when it was still in the Blackstone Hotel. I was there, and Makowicz's ability to merge a formidable technique with a sweetly Chopinesque lyricism produced an indelible evening.
Which makes you wonder why it has taken Makowicz more than two decades to return to a city steeped in jazz and long home to a large Polish population. Certainly Chicago seems ripe for Makowicz's art.
"In the 1990s, when Poland became a free country, I started to play there and in Europe quite extensively," explains Makowicz, who had emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s and hadn't been allowed to re-enter Poland when martial law was declared there in 1981.
The opportunity to perform again in his homeland and its environs after his Chicago engagement proved irresistible to Makowicz.
"And so I played less in the United States," he says. "In 2005, I got married to a Canadian woman and spent a lot of time in Toronto. … "And the people in the U.S. forgot me, because when you're not here, you don't exist."
Makowicz now divides his time among Toronto, New York and Europe.
So Makowicz's solo performance Sept. 7 at the Chopin Theatre represents a long-awaited Chicago return that likely will draw a broad range of listeners: jazz connoisseurs, pianophiles, Polish Chicagoans and anyone curious to hear how this distinctive artist has developed during a generation away.
Makowicz, 70, is the first to acknowledge that the world in general, and music in particular, has changed radically during those years.
"Today, people are connected (electronically) with the whole world," he says. "Music changed because we have opportunities to listen to music (from anywhere) right away. So we are influenced by all kinds of classical music, jazz, of course, and other kinds. If we like it, we extract it, and we put it into our own improvisations, these new elements, to make it more exciting."
How these global sounds have influenced Makowicz's pianism won't be known until he steps to the piano at the Chopin Theatre next week. But considering the huge stylistic leap he took as a classical piano student in Poland, when he realized "swing was so beautiful" and remade himself into a leading jazz pianist, Makowicz certainly has the wherewithal to have rejuvenated his art once more.
Adam Makowicz plays solo piano 8 p.m. Sept. 7 at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.; $35; 773-278-1500 or chopintheatre.com
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
