Some jazz guitarists are specialized in certain aspects of the genre. Young Polish guitarist Julek Warszawski appears to be one of those rare masters of all trades. He plays jazzy R&B with the band Roseye, and explores the possibilities of combining classical guitar music with electronic music in fonoduo. And then there is a side to him that hasn’t been revealed to the public just yet.

“I like heavier stuff”, Warszawski says at the start of the conversation. “I’m more of a riff guy. You would be surprised how much room for that there is in Roseye, I think. I would say that I try to bring the rocky aspect to the band. A little bit of distortion, some lower end… You are definitely going to hear some riffs when you see us live.

It feels good to be on the inside of this scene. But I also have a dream of doing something heavier, maybe in my own solo project. I’m really inspired by Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, and I have always been listening to the Rolling Stones a lot. My father always listened to music from the seventies, so I grew up listening to Clapton, Jeff Beck, Albert King…

There are so many great guitar players that inspire me, and I want to put that in my own music. I’m making demos right now, and hopefully, by the end of the year, I can have at least a single. At the moment, I must focus on my studies, on my master in classical music. But I never stopped being curious about the electric guitar.”

A Getaway from Classical Music

“There are a few sides to my guitar playing. Since I was a kid, I have always been interested in electric guitar. It was my getaway from classical music. Because in Poland, it’s really difficult to just start playing the electric guitar. There are not a lot of opportunities for it. It’s way more difficult to dream with an electric guitar in your hands if you’re not aiming to be a soloist, for example.

I always love to work with people. So the classical path was the safer one. And more accessible for me also. But listening to all of these great electric guitar players, the idea of playing on stages with bands got engraved so much in my head – or in my ears, actually. It’s the total opposite to what I was doing my whole life with classical music, where you are alone, very exposed, in silence, you have to get a lot of precision.

Classical music was something I used as a ticket, as a key to open new doors. I arrived in Amsterdam for my studies, fully conscious that I wanted to explore other scenes as well, and blend in. I never really had guitar lessons or anything else.

Then I got in touch with Tallulah (Rose, Roseye’s singer and saxophonist). She wanted someone who plays acoustic guitar to do some shows as a duo, and try to write songs together. And it just worked. One day, she just asked me if I wanted to join the band. They already had some songs released, but within a month or two, we started writing together, and we knew there was such a big potential there.”

Everything in the Moment

“Musically, I am from a very conservative, very strict background. And now I feel a bit like a free bird. Even though classical music is not limiting, I do think that more than fifteen years of classical education limited my creativity a lot. Because it consumes a lot of time, and if you don’t want to put all your bets on one horse – in terms of deciding whether you want to be a classical guitar player or not – I think it’s really hard to combine band rehearsals and a classical solo career, or a chamber music career.

At some point, I just had to make a decision: what makes me happier? Where do I feel more comfortable? And that’s definitely this creative part, and groove. I’m just ready for it now. Maybe I will come back to classical music one day, because it has only been about a year since I got my master’s degree at the Amsterdam conservatory. So it’s still fresh, and I’m discovering different aspects of this life. I enjoy it very much.

Everyone in Roseye has space to express themselves. We are more likely to cut a song at the end of the set than to cut solos if we have a short set. So we’re really enjoying ourselves on stage. Since we don’t play on click, everything is very natural. We listen to each other a lot. We just find each other on stage all the time. And then if somebody plays a solo, it’s really nice to bring it down, help somebody build up, listen to what they are doing. Everything is in the moment. Even when we record in the studio.”

A Common Language

“Everyone in Roseye finished jazz education, except for me. All these amazing musicians and friends of mine are incredibly skilled jazz players, that play in many different projects as session musicians. But somehow, everyone forgets about that when we get together, and focus on our own music. It’s a really special project, I have to say. We get to explore these different sounds, and how to push boundaries between genres, and to find our place within society as musicians.

We always jam. That’s where the songs come from. Or Tallulah brings some ideas that she’s writing herself, and then we just write B and C sections, and make it happen. A lot of the songs on our new EP ‘Ways of Speaking’ are co-written by the other members, so everybody has creative input. To have five people that are from different countries chase their dreams in Amsterdam, and then get together, and trust each other with this: that is something very special.

Other people develop projects as leaders, and then they have session musicians playing with them, because it’s easier and more reliable. Having a band these days is a real challenge. Especially without a big label and big money investments. Each of us has to do other stuff on the side.

Joshua (Lutz, keyboard player) has a beautiful solo career with Halfpastseven, to whose new album ‘The Calm and the Storm‘ I have contributed guitar parts as well. I have a guitar duo with my friend Odée Mertzweiler called fonoduo, where we blend classical music with electronic music, and we are preparing for an album right now. Kasparas (Petkus, drummer) is a great session musician, and a band leader as well. Tallulah gets invited everywhere. Deborah (Slijkhuis, bassist) plays in so many projects, and does her own music as well, also beautiful stuff…

So it’s uplifting that we can meet in Roseye, and we find a common language, but outside of Roseye, each of us is a very strong character musically as well. When we played at North Sea Jazz last year, with so many gigs at the same time, and the room was full, I thought for the first time: okay, these people came to see us for a reason. Which felt so special. All this energy invested without knowing what was actually going to happen, but keeping our heads up, did eventually pay off.”

A Removable Neck

“Recently, I have been testing a new guitar from a Polish luthier. It’s called Nexus, from Jacek Kobylski, an incredible luthier on the highest level. It has a removable neck, so I can fit my guitar in my carry-on luggage. It’s insane, but very convenient. It’s about the size of a Gibson CS. So a smaller ES. It’s a semi-hollow that I can remove the neck from in ten seconds, put it back in, and I can play it. No problem at the airports. It’s 64 centimeters diagonally, so it fits perfectly.

You need a very strong neck for this. There are a few titanium rods inside that make it very stiff. That’s why it’s a little bit like a bow used for hunting. It has a very fast attack, so it’s very interesting to find out how it sounds on stage. There are two heavy humbuckers on board also. Very rocky. So I’m really excited about it. I may have to tame it a bit for Roseye shows, haha!

It’s a one-piece made from mahogany from Madagascar, and a Polish maple top, from the Polish Tatra Mountains. It has Lollar pick-ups and Gotoh hardware. The pick-ups are split, so I can have a single-coil sound with just one pull. So it has a lot of tonal options as well. For the neck, I have a special key, and it basically works as a tight bolt-on neck. It’s impossible to move. Also, it has locking tuners, because if I take off the neck, I can just keep the strings on.

Also, it has a very classical guitar neck profile. Because when I play, I usually keep my thumb in the middle, just like in classical positions. That’s just something I got used to. I don’t usually grab the neck, so I like the neck to be a bit wider, a bit more chunky.

Jacek is a friend of mine. I have known him since I was a kid. I’ve been really lucky that my father was also passionate about music from the very beginning. One day, we just found out that a great luthier lived nearby, and a lot of great musicians were using his instruments. In the Polish scene, but also internationally. First, I was servicing the instruments at his place, and later on, I had a Tele from him, which was a great instrument I’ve been using on the ‘Ayesha’ solo.”

Expanding the Sound Spectrum

“When I can drive, I usually bring a Fender ’68 Custom Reverb. That is my go-to amplifier. I love clean amps. Because Jeff Beck is one of my main influences, I really love to have everything under the control of my fingers. That also has to do with my classical technique. I’m pretty much focused on the right hand, and the dynamic of the guitar.

If I have to travel by train, I bring a very small pedalboard with an RMC10 wah, a tuner, and a Hamstead Subspace overdrive pedal, which is made for bass, but it sounds so good on guitar, I couldn’t resist getting it. And it’s very flexible: it can work as a clean boost, it can work as sort of a TS-style overdrive, but it can also get very fuzzy, if you turn up the gain.

Then I have a Strymon Deco, which is like the heart of my pedalboard. A very flexible pedal. I love it for the chorus sounds. The tape saturation on it is very nice. Too bad I never really have a stereo set-up, but when I’m at home, it’s so nice to explore these sounds through stereo. Ending the chain is a Strymon Big Sky for ambient stuff. We have two synths on board, so we have enough in that part of the sound spectrum. I don’t need so many pedals.

Having said that, I do bring a bigger pedalboard when we travel by car, in which case we have some special effects from Fairfield Circuitry as well, for example. Some ring modulators, octavers, harmonizers… To expand the sound spectrum. But it’s also good to focus on being very tight, very groovy, and just keeping the natural aspects of the instruments.”

Pentatonic Madness

One of the songs on the recently released Roseye EP is ‘Ayesha’, arguably the band’s breakthrough song. It features a particularly strong guitar solo courtesy of Warszawski. “That’s a one-taker from a live session”, he explains. “And they just kept it entirely. It was a joy to record that song together, because we had been wanting to release if for a long time now.

The solo just fits the song. It’s a really guitaristic song. We wrote it partly with Tallulah, but it was also developed by the other musicians in the band. When we thought about which instrument could have a solo there, it was obvious that the guitar would be a right fit. It was perfect for this pentatonic madness and bending strings.”

An edited version of this interview appeared in Gitarist 408 (March 2025)