Marcin Masecki was born in 1982 in Warsaw, Poland. At age 3 he started training with his father and at 7 he took up the piano. He quickly showed interest in improvisation and by 12 he was a regular at the legendary Polish jazz club "Akwarium". A year later he formed a piano trio and over the next years played frequently in clubs and entered three competitions, winning second place at the 1997 Jazz Sarteano Competition in Siena Italy and first place in two competitions in Poland. At 15 Masecki joined the much larger Polish jazz group "Alchemik" and co-wrote most of their output which was recorded on four CDs and was for several years a very successful Polish jazz group playing in jazz festivals and clubs over Europe. At 16 he won the award for "Best Soloist" at the Jazz Hoeilaart Competition in Brussels (1999) while Alchemik won first place. That same year he was voted by Poland's main jazz magazine ("Jazz Forum") as the year's "greatest hope for the future of Polish jazz."
Meanwhile he was working intensely on classical music. At 15 he entered the F.Chopin Music School in Warsaw on a dual major - Jazz and Classical. A year later he performed Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with the Kielce Symphony Orchestra. At 18 he gave his music school graduation recital held at the F.Chopin Museum in Warsaw. He conitnued his studies on scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 2 1/2 years. During his stay there he formed the trio TAQ with Garth Stevenson on bass and Ziv Ravitz on drums (see discography).
Upon return to Warsaw, he married and re-entered the Polish jazz world. In 2005 he entered the Moscow International Jazz Piano Competition and won first plac. In Warsaw he got particularly involved in the free improvised scene as well as an intense research of 18th century music, culminating in building his own clavichord (the predecessor of the piano). In the summer of 2006 he organized a 6 day festival under his name in which he played every night in a different setting - the first concert was Bach's Viola da Gamba Sonatas and the last was a free jazz quartet. That same year Masecki started working with the DJ collective "Innocent Sorcerers". Together with trumpet player Tomasz Stanko they have performed on various festivals, including the Heineken Open'er Fest in Gdynia.
Other bands he has worked with include Pink Freud, Zbigniew Wegehaupt Quartet, TAQ, Muzykoterpia. Mitch & Mitch and artists such as Michal Urbaniak, Dave Samuels, George Garzone, and Candelaria Saenz Valiente, among others. He regularly performs solo improvised concerts as well, recently opening for the Branford Marsalis Quartet. This summer he will also be opening for the Wynton Marsalis Orchestra in the Warsaw Jazz Summer Days festival. His first solo album is scheduled for release in September 2007 on the label LADO ABC.
At the beginning of 2007, in search of artistic adventure he moved to London where he lives now.
