On September 26, 2026, Atom String Quartet will begin its third tour of the United States. Highlights include performances at the iconic Monterey Jazz Festival and at Dizzy’s Club (Jazz at Lincoln Center) in New York.

The tour opens with a concert at the 69th Monterey Jazz Festival. Notably, the quartet will perform there exactly 50 years after Zbigniew Seifert, who appeared at the festival in September 1976 with John Lewis’s band and The Heath Brothers. It was the legendary Polish violinist’s first concert in the United States, as Aneta Norek recounts in her book Życie i twórczość Zbigniewa Seiferta. Man of the Light.

“Monterey is a dream come true for us,” say the members of Atom String Quartet. “It’s one of the oldest and most prestigious jazz festivals in the world, where the greatest have performed: from Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk to one of the few Poles ever to play there, Zbigniew Seifert, exactly 50 years ago. We dedicated one of our albums to him, and it feels like we’re coming full circle.”

On September 30, the quartet will return to New York’s renowned Dizzy’s Club for the second time, playing two sets that evening, at 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM.

American audiences will hear music by world-renowned Polish composers, from Fryderyk Chopin and Krzysztof Penderecki to Michał Urbaniak and Zbigniew Namysłowski. The musicians will also present material from their latest album, Atom Goes Funky, released as the 91st title in the acclaimed Polish Jazz series, as well as original compositions.

The program of the US tour reflects what the ensemble has been developing for more than 16 years: inspiration from classical music, improvisation in the broadest sense, and Polish funk. Audiences will be transported to a unique era of Polish music in the 1970s and 1980s, when jazz met funk and the sound of new, often electric instruments, all in the distinctive atmosphere of a country behind the Iron Curtain, on the threshold of major social and political change.

Tour

Sept. 26, 2026 – Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, CA

Sept. 27, 2026 – Old First Concerts, San Francisco, CA

Sept. 30, 2026 – Dizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, NY (two sets)

Project co-financed by the Ministry Culture and National Heritage