Karolina Cicha

Karolina Cicha and Bart Palyga will visit the United States for the first time this fall, playing over 10 concerts on their tour, including at prestigious world music festivals and universities. Their tour will promote 9 Languages, a project showcasing the multicultural region of Podlasie in northeast Poland.

9 Languages will be presented at the World Music Festival Chicago, the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, the Landfall Festival of World Music and Alverno College's Global Union World Music Festival. Cicha and Palyga will also visit the University of Illinois at Chicago and Alverno College, where they will hold master classes. The tour will end with a concert co-presented by Live Sounds at the legendary DROM club in New York as part of the New York Gypsy Festival.

9 Languages is linked to the traditions of Podlasie, the home region of multi-instrumentalist and composer Karolina Cicha. The project draws on the full range of traditional music, but rather than an archival compilation, its a compact whole, speaking the language of contemporary music. This language is built on the innovative style of the two performers, their charisma, and their experience in musical expression from folk, ancient and rock music projects. 9 Languages features songs in the minority languages of the Podlasie region of northeast Poland, bordering Russia, Lithuania and Belarus: Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Russian, Romani, Belarusian, Yiddish, Polish, Tatar and Esperanto. Traditional folk instruments, such as the morin khuur, dotar, Jew's harp, duduk, accordion and mandolin are joined by modern samplers and loopers, as well as ancient overtone singing. 9 Languages was awarded the Grand Prix of the Polish Radio New Tradition Festival and has been performed at the most prestigious folk festivals. This fall, the concert will be staged as part of the official selection of the World Music Expo WOMEX in Budapest.

Karolina Cicha is a vocalist, composer, actor and multi-instrumentalist. From 2005 - 2009 she was a member of the Gardzienice Theater Practice Center and created the title roles in their productions of Electra and Iphigenia in A... Her new album, Greetings from Yiddishland, with songs composed to texts written by Jewish poets from Podlasie region, will premiere at the 2015 Warsaw Singer Festival. Her newest project, Poland  Pakistan: Music Without Borders was produced with the support of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Islamabad. The goal of this musical journey was a collaboration between Karolina Cicha and Shafqat Ali Khan, a songwriter and master of the ghazal tradition of Indian classical music.

Bart Palyga is a cellist, multi-instrumentalist and improvisational artist. He specializes in more than a dozen string instruments from around the world. He has collaborated with the bands Laterna, Masala, Village Kollektiv, Arcus Poloniae, the Polish Ensemble, Yerba Mater and the Maria Pomianowska Ensemble.