Before the concert, every audience member was informed that turning off mobile phones and refraining from recording or photographing the artist was mandatory. The cultural centre’s team was nervous. The star had arrived in the city and was imposing strict conditions. Uncertainty hung in the air—not the kind known from Marek Grechuta’s song. Apparently, Michał Bajor would interrupt concerts if he was dissatisfied with the technical operation of the stage.
The hall was full. People waited for the doors to close. Latecomers could not be admitted during the concert. The musicians accompanying the artist took their places on stage. A moment of silence, the lights went out, and Michał Bajor walked onto the stage, singing about love “between the heat of words and the shadow of those words.” And when the words of the first song rang out—“When I do not see you, I do not sigh, I do not cry”—the audience was completely enchanted. The first spell cast by his eyes turned into the first flutter of the heart. And during the song “Samba Before Parting,” everyone already knew they had fallen under the spell of the eccentric artist. This love was brief, but beautiful—like Michał Bajor’s concert.
The artist interpreted a challenging repertoire. Each text by the two poets—Marek Grechuta and Jonasza Kofta—is a separate world. These are not ordinary, neatly crafted songs. Each song tells the story of one life. From the anecdotes Bajor shared with the audience, it emerged that Kofta felt like a painter who did not write songs but painted pictures with words. And every feeling described by Kofta and Grechuta was sung by the artist. There were difficult partings, love lasting to the end, moments of enchantment and flirtations, and the great mystery that is love for another person. A person who is close yet unfathomable (Kofta beautifully described his wife in the song “Her Portrait”: “No one really knows what you are like; that truth is not needed by me at all”). But there was also love presented grotesquely and humorously, as in the song “My Heart Is Breaking.” To the rhythm of Ogiński’s monumental polonaise, the artist confessed: “Every love comes to an end; I’m going to the PKS station.”
At the end of the concert, a pleasant incident for the audience also took place. Before the first encore, a woman called out from the hall that she wanted to hear one of Bajor’s own songs. The artist initially explained politely that he could not do that and apologized. But when he came out for the second encore, he was won over by the audience and gave in. He sang his old song “Afternoon,” written for him by Jonasza Kofta. And he told the story of how the song came into being. The lyrics were written in a Warsaw restaurant. Kofta and Korcz were sitting at a table. Jonasz said that he had lyrics for Michał Bajor, but Korcz had to buy him a drink in return. When he had finished it, he demanded a second one and sent Korcz to a kiosk for a 16-page notebook and a pen. Then, from memory at the café table, he wrote one of the most beautiful texts about betrayal and about how love sometimes happens not to us but to other people we love. And then one must remember that between every moment of sadness and joy, the muse of good fortune moves… and that only the days we do not yet know count—as Michał Bajor sang so beautifully at the exceptional concert at the Forum cinema.
(report by Grażyna Hanaf, photos: www.michalbajor.pl)