Piotr Schmidt
jazz trumpeter, graduate cum laude of the Jazz Institute at the Academy of Music, Katowice, Poland. He studied trumpet under the direction of Piotr Wojtasik. In 2006 he won a scholarship to University of Louisville, Kentucky. As an individual musician he received honourable mentions in the 2008 and 2009 Jazz nad Odrą competitions in Wrocław, and in the 2008 “I’st Tarnów Jazz Contest”. Tarnów Jazz Contest. He came third in the 2008 Zmagania Jazzowe in Szczecin, won Grand Prix in 2010 “Novum Jazz Festival” in Łomża and received an award for The Best Soloist in XXXIV Getxo Jazz Festival, Spain 2010.

I was born to a family with musical traditions. My mother’s a choral conductor by education; she has always been a great interpreter of classical piano at home, and a great sight reader. After raising the kids, she became a music educator and a school concert organiser on behalf of the Silesian and the Opole Philharmonics. My dad is a well-known jazz historian, author of a three-volume history of jazz which, since the late nineties, has been the textbook of choice at many jazz departments in Poland. He was a pianist and swing band leader in the 1940s, and afterwards became a leading Polish jazz and music educator, host of countless concerts and festivals, and jazz critic at various music publications. I was the only one of their three children to study music and I quickly started winning jazz competitions in Poland and Europe. After I won all that I could, I focused on my recording career

Currently, I’m not only a jazz trumpeter, but also a composer, band leader, music producer and publisher, lecturer at the Jazz Institutes of the University of Applied Sciences in Nysa and the Katowice Academy of Music, where in 2016 I’ve gained a doctoral degree in Music. In 2006 I won a scholarship to University of Louisville, Kentucky and early in my career (2006-2010) I won many individual awards and Grand Prix’s now being one of the most important jazz figures in Poland and middle Europe.

To date, I have produced and published twelve own albums, including three with Schmidt Electric. For the past eight years I have ranked among the best three jazz trumpeters in the annual Jazz Top poll of the Jazz Forum European magazine. One of my latest projects: Piotr Schmidt Quartet – Tribute to Tomasz Stańko is considered by Wolf Mueller (Sony Music Germany) as one of the 10 best albums from 2018 in the World!)

Among my many collaborators are: Walter Smith III, Matthew Stevens, Alex Hutchings, Ernesto Simpson, Ed Partyka, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski, Dante Luciani, Francesco Angiuli. As publisher and producer, I have co-created SJRecords (www.sjrecords.eu) through which, from 2011, there have been published 52 albums well regarded by music fans and professionals, critics and music journalists ...