10 Chopin In The City - J.Bester and Metropolitan JO

Name: 10 Chopin In The City - J.Bester and Metropolitan JO
Start: 2026-02-21T20:30:00-06:00
Location: 3111 N Western Ave Chicago IL 60618

Schedule

Sat, 21 Feb, 2026 at 08:30 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

3111 N Western Ave Chicago IL 60618 | Chicago, IL

8:30pm.

This program is brought to you in part by our friends at WDCB Jazz.

You can watch the livestream HERE [https://youtube.com/live/sbkum4-U1tU?feature=share].
If you watch the livestream, please support the artists by purchasing a livestream ticket.

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10 Chopin In the City Festival Present: Jarek Bester American Quartet and Metropolitan Jazz Octet.

Jarek Bester - Int'l accordion phenomenon from Krakow, Poland with:
Marc Feldman - violin
Quin Kirschner - drums
Matt Ulery - bass

The Chopin IN The City Festival proudly celebrates 10 years of uniting world-class musicians, artists, and performers in reimagining Fryderyk Chopin’s legacy through jazz, classical, folk, dance, theater, and visual art.

The Metropolitan Jazz Octet (MJO), founded in the 1950s by saxophonist-composer Tom Hilliard and later revived by Jim Gailloreto and John Kornegay, carries forward a vital piece of Chicago’s jazz heritage. Blending the sweep of a big band with the intimacy of chamber music, the Octet transforms arranging into an art of color, texture, and surprise.

For this program, MJO collaborates with acclaimed pianist Ben Lewis to reimagine two of Chopin’s celebrated piano works. Chopin’s music, rich with lyrical melodies, chromatic daring, and rhythmic flexibility, has long resonated with jazz musicians. Though he never wrote jazz, his spirit of improvisation and ornamental freedom feels strikingly modern, offering fertile ground for reinterpretation.

Through contemporary, masterful treatments, Lewis and MJO recast Chopin’s musical poetry into vibrant soundscapes pulsing with a jazz heartbeat. The program also features original octet compositions by Kornegay and Gailloreto, bridging tradition and innovation in equal measure.

Impromptu in A-flat major—one of Chopin’s most cherished shorter works—reveals his flair for brilliant figuration and lyrical expression.

Prelude in E minor, steeped in Romantic intensity, conveys immense depth of emotion.

Quandary is a contemporary jazz waltz with complex harmonies and rhythms. The title describes a musical dilemma: which motifs to use or toss?

No Man’s Land is a post apocalypse adventure. The music conjures images of twisted rubble, desolate landscapes, and the heroes that struggle
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Jarek Bester – an accordion player and a composer, PhD of arts, a graduate of the Krakow Academy of Music, a prizewinner of several international and Polish accordion contests. He has formed The Cracow Klezmer Band – the only Polish music ensemble that permanently cooperates with John Zorn’s prestigious Tzadik label in New York City. In his performing style, he combines his wide experience in classical music with many other genres and makes use of some clear improvised forms to create an unusually powerful mix that presents some first-time ever colors and techniques to be achieved on the accordion. Thanks to these skills, he is considered today one of the very original musicians of the worldwide. His oeuvre, apart from some CDs on the NYC Tzadik label, as well as guest appearances on other CDs, includes some recordings for radio and television in Germany, Sweden, USA, Finland and Poland. He has co-performed with and arranged or composed for many great classical and vanguard musicians. His compositions and arrangements were performed by the Dafo, Sinfonietta Cracovia, Aukso, the Chamber Orchestra of St. Krzysztof from Vilnius, Capella Bydgostiensis, NeoQuartet, and the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Among them one can cite such outstanding artists as: John Zorn, Grazyna Auguscik, John McClean, Don Byron, Jorgos Skolias, Roby Lakatos, Dorota Miskiewicz, Frank London, Ernie Adams, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Waldemar Malicki, Vadim Brodsky, Vitold Rek, Maria Pomianowska, Bronek Duzy and many others.

Jaroslaw Bester - Youtube [