Guest
music by Andrzej Kurylewicz Meltem Ege (v) Bradley Butterworth (g, audio) We’re mourning the loss of a valuable friend and mentor, Janusz Szprot. He introduced me to this famous Polish tune, and when the mood was right, we would play it as the last song of our show. He was a generous and talented educator, composer, arranger, and pianist from Poland. In 2005, I sang a few songs for him at a jam session once, and lucky for me, we never stopped playing for 14 years. From the get-go he always treated me as his colleague and had complete faith in me and my music. He later became a huge supporter of my academic career too, even writing me one of the recommendation letters that got me into my doctoral program. Since then we have played clubs, festivals, conferences, and much more. I wouldn’t be where I am today without him, and I don’t say that for many people. Even when I moved away from Turkey to the US, every time I visited, he would say “I can feel the electricity in the air change when your pl
