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Kateryna Ziabliuk

Kateryna Ziabliuk - pianist, singer, composer, journalist. Based in Poland/Italy.

Comes from Kyiv and has studied in Katowice, Krakow and Milan. Raised in a family of artists and, surrounded by various directions of art, started playing the piano and singing at the age of 6. She is one of the most promising figures on the Ukrainian music scene. In her work, he uses the language of modern jazz, but at the same time, does not hesitate to use elements of traditional music and explore the cultural heritage of his homeland.

In 2019, based on a poem by Lesia Ukrainka, she recorded an improvised suite with her trio, Lisova Pisnya (Forest Song). At the invitation of the Katowice JazzArt Festival in 2022, she reinterpreted the piece in a duet with the leading Polish singer Natalia Kordiak. The performance gave rise to the TANŌK project. In 2020, her first solo album appeared and got the name Borders Make You Grow, which was created literally in room conditions during the first months of the pandemic. After a year, she published the live album from the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Ludwigshafen, which contained variations of original and folk songs from the previous album.

Ziabliuk collaborated with the Balkan folk band Kriva Drina, where she played the accordion, sang and co-created the arrangements, and, among others, with Kamila Drabek and Patrycja Wybranczyk - members of the O.N.E Quartet, one of the most interesting phenomena of the Polish jazz scene of the last decade. Kateryna co-creates many permanent and one-off projects at festival invitations, including with members of the Australian Art Orchestra, SonCe Trio, Lumpeks, Unleashed Cooperation, The Black Sea Songs and many more. Since that she has made numerous appearances all over Europe, which she intensified in the face of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, by choice acting as the "cultural ambassador" of Ukraine in the Western world.

In addition, she is a co-founder and editor of the Meloport, where she publishes her texts devoted to improvised music, and former art director of Contra Jazz Club, which, despite its short existence, was an educational open stage for young Ukrainian musicians, where they could experiment with new projects, share the knowledge and networking.

Gear

Piano, prepared piano, vocal, electronics, accordion (occasionally), percussions

Kateryna Ziabliuk: 23 Ways To Forget Oneself

by Ian Patterson
March 5, 2025

The cryptically titled “23 Ways To Forget Oneself" will, if given the attention it deserves, spirit the listener away from their daily concerns--perhaps even forgetting themselves along the way--for just under nine minutes. Kateryna Ziabliuk works her keys like a sculptor, chiseling surely but steadily, gradually revealing a form--her increasingly fluid lines tinged with Ukrainian folk melodies, and briefly tipping a wink to Thelonious Monk. There is something of Keith Jarrett in Ziabliuk's improvisation, the way her left hand maintains ...

"When listening to the music of young Ukrainian pianist Kateryna Ziabliuk (1999) here, it gives a feeling of remote concentration connected to a calmness underlying a tension of stasis and maneuverability. The music is with itself in an astonishing way lacking each sign of bravado or attempt to shine."

Henning Bolte, EJN Media Chart

“An incredible battle of chaos and harmony, an expressive meeting of love and suffering are fitted into 75 minutes. In her suite Ziabliuk talentedly covers a wide range of genres from avant-garde and jazz to ethno-meditations and this makes the work an extraordinary event in Ukrainian music.”