About Bodek

As a highly talented child from a Polish-Russian family of musicians, a professional musical career was in the offing for Janke right from the start. From the age of three, he was taught piano by his mother, Olga Janke, and composition and music theory by his aunt, Tatyana Kamysheva. During his six-year stay (2004-2010) in New York City, Bodek Janke worked with David Liebman, Billy Harper, Ben Monder and Dave Binney, among others. He played several times at Carnegie Hall, where his arrangement "Wings", a composition by Pandit Samir Chatterjee, was premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra before Anoushka Shankar's concert. Regular appearances in local jazz clubs and music halls (Iridium, Smalls, The Knitting Factory, 55 Bar and many others) have been his source of inspiration and work for many years, alongside international tours (including the USA, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Greece, France, Spain, Germany, Poland and Russia). He also met his guru (mentor), Pandit Samir Chatterjee, in New York City and began intensive studies of classical Indian music and the tabla. Bodek Janke has been living in Germany again since 2010 and works regularly with the WDR and NDR big bands (both with drums and percussion), with saxophonist Steffen Schorn, pianist and singer Olivia Trummer, trumpeter Matthias Schriefl and pianist Kristjan Randalu. Internationally, he has worked for some time with the American jazz violinist Jeremy Kittel (Turtle Island String Quartet), the Israeli guitarist Gilad Hekselman (Ari Hoenig Quartet), the Parisian harmonica player Olivier Ker Ourio and the Moscow State Jazz Orchestra. In 2008, Bodek Janke was awarded the Baden-Württemberg Jazz Prize and the German Record Prize (with Olivia Trummer's CD "Westwind"). In 2010 he won the soloist prize of the New German Jazz Prize in Mannheim and first prize at the 4th International Bucharest Jazz Competition.