Olgierd Dokalski is a Polish self-taught trumpeter, composer, improviser, and filmmaker with an interest in folk traditions and their cultural contexts. He was the bandleader of the Daktari quintet, inspired by the aesthetics of post-rock, folk, and avant-garde jazz, and interprets with the quartet nor cold Sephardic songs originating from the early twentieth-century Balkans, and is a member of the electroacoustic trio kIRk and the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra.
Preludes to the Universe is Dokalski’s second solo album, following the concept Mirza Tarak (Fundacja Kaisera Söze, 2016) about the first Polish Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca. Preludes to the Universe tells different kinds of stories. It is a set of seven immersive yet abstract musical stories «about order taking shape, about forms emerging from chaos, about sounds finding their place».
Dokalski played the trumpet and flugelhorn, augmented and layered with live processing and live electronics, but with no samples, and all the music was recorded live at Bloop Studio in Warsaw in February 2026. Dokalski’s trumpet playing and his sound owe much to the ambient side of Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær. His music is based on simple, folk-like melodies, gently abstracted into almost abstract, lyrical and often melancholic ambient soundscapes. The opening piece, «Hello Sweet», quotes a Ukrainian song, and «Picaz» is based on a love song from Belarus.
Eyal Hareuveni
Olgierd Dokalski (trumpet, flugelhorn, live electronics)
