About me

I am a person who could probably not live without two things: work and music. I am therefore immensely grateful to a Higher Power that I managed to combine these two things in one life. I completed a basic accordion class, through which I gained the foundations of musical theory, but it was not until secondary school that my adventure with instruments began. At the start of this adventure, I fell in love with percussion instruments: congas, djembes, dun-duns and others — played with hands or sticks, and they became my whole world. Given the nature of my school (a mechanical technical college), I had the opportunity to make my first chisels, and that is how it all started.

That was long, long ago… later came a break of several years: Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, travel, work, and new horizons. My first encounter with bagpipes came in Berlin. On the same street as me lived a man by the name of Hans (whose surname I cannot recall), who was making these very instruments. He invited me into his workshop, the atmosphere of which, to me as a layman, resembled an alchemist’s laboratory. And so I fell in love with bagpipes. However, it was still some time before I made my first instrument. It was a bagpipe with a single reed and one drone, in natural goat skin. It looked archaic and played that way too — but, as they say, you have to start somewhere.

I am a self-taught practitioner; I gathered the information I needed from the internet, poring over books and testing that knowledge in practice. In this way I have already worked through an entire mountain of wood (and the mountain keeps growing to this day). About three years ago, my friend Jan Gałczewski introduced me to the bagpipes of Western Europe: the gaita, medieval bagpipes, and Scottish bagpipes. What they have in common is the double reed, conical chanter bore, and the volume and penetrating quality of the sound. And once again I fell in love. Now I divide my time between two loves: Eastern and Western. Besides bagpipes, I also build flageolets without finger holes, flageolets with finger holes, kavals, simple keyless clarinets, and double-headed drums. In my work I make use of existing plans, but I also create new instruments according to my own solutions, or according to the ideas and wishes of the people for whom I make them. My favourite material is pear wood, but I also use cherry, plum, sycamore, ash, and elderberry. Above all, I am an idealist. My dream is for bagpipes to become as popular again as they were centuries ago, and to find their way into ordinary homes — just as they once came from there.