Boba Jazz Band

Kraków roots and a band built to last

Boba Jazz Band emerged from Kraków’s traditional‑jazz scene at the turn of the 1990s. Sources in Poland date the group’s start either to April 1990 or to 1991, when pianist and arranger Jan Boba and guitarist/banjoist Jerzy Marek Rosner gathered fellow veterans of local dixieland outfits into a working band. Early line‑ups featured two generations of Kraków players, among them trumpeter and singer Władysław Grochot, trombonist Mariusz Oleksa, clarinettist/saxophonist Janusz Nowotarski, and the brothers Jan (double bass, vocals) and Aleksander Nowak (drums). The brief was simple and has remained consistent: keep classic New Orleans, dixieland and swing repertoire alive on Polish stages and dancefloors. By the early 2000s the group was a reliable presence in Kraków’s venues and restaurant residencies, including regular appearances at Wierzynek from May 2001.

The recordings that fixed the brief

The band’s first CD, the live set Everybody Loves My Baby (1996), announced its repertoire plainly. In 1997–1998 came two further concert discs recorded at the Studienhaus club in Hamburg; one was cut with the English clarinettist Monty Sunshine, long associated with Britain’s trad revival. Two studio albums were tracked in 2000 at Radio Kraków’s Studio S‑5: one marked the group’s tenth anniversary, the other, Boba Jazz Band Plays Satchmo, paid tribute to Louis Armstrong’s centenary that year. A TV project, Wieczór w Louisianie, was recorded in 2001 at Studio Łęg. The group’s studio collaboration with vocalist Katarzyna Radwańska, C’est si bon, arrived in 2003, and an off‑the‑cuff concert with Valerie Scott—Jam Session—was issued the same year.

Streaming services are fragmentary, but Apple Music currently lists Live at the BP Studienhaus (dated 2000) with a concert programme that mirrors what the band still brings to the stage: What a Wonderful World, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Sweet Georgia Brown, High Society, 12th Street Rag, The Preacher and other standards. The recorded catalogue is small‑label and locally issued, but across it the band hews to a traditional book, emphasising ensemble stomp, amiable stagecraft and familiar melodies.

A fixture of Kraków’s summer jazz

Within Kraków the group has been woven into the long‑running Letni/Summer Jazz Festival programme based around Piwnica pod Baranami on the Rynek Główny. They were included in festival materials in earlier editions and have remained on July bills in recent years. In 2026 the Slovak jazz portal SKJazz.sk published the club’s daily festival schedule and listed Boba Jazz Band for Friday 31 July at Piwnica pod Baranami. Separate event listings also flagged a Boba Jazz Band night at Piwnica on that date. The association goes back years: municipal and festival documents from the 2000s place the band among the core traditional‑jazz names—alongside Jazz Band Ball Orchestra and Old Metropolitan Jazz Band—who gave the city’s July calendar its New Orleans Sunday parades and nightly club churn.

Who’s on stage

Personnel has evolved, but the constants are leader and pianist Jan Boba and trumpeter–vocalist Władysław Grochot (whose own Just Jazz Quintet has appeared under the Summer Jazz banner, with biographical notes there listing his long service in Boba’s group). A festival roster from 2023 shows a then‑current sextet of Boba (piano), Grochot (trumpet, vocal), Przemysław Walczak (clarinet, alto saxophone), Janusz Nowak (trombone, vocal), Jan Nowak (double bass) and Aleksander Nowak (drums). Earlier configurations included Janusz Nowotarski on clarinet/sax and the guitarist–banjoist Jerzy Marek Rosner. The instrumentation—trumpet, clarinet/sax and trombone over a rhythm section—keeps the band close to the classic polyphonic front line of New Orleans and British trad bands.

2026: steady diary, one date on sale

In 2026 the band has kept its local diary, mostly in Kraków rooms. Globus Music Club—run by festival director and promoter Witold Wnuk—listed Boba Jazz Band among its February 2026 concert programmes, with 19:30 starts and tickets in the 50 PLN range. Ticketmaster Poland carried a Globus date for Friday 17 April 2026 at 19:30, another indication of the group’s regular use of that stage.

Through the summer they appeared inside the July festival grid anchored at Piwnica pod Baranami; the 31 July 2026 club schedule named Boba Jazz Band for that night. As of Monday 7 September 2026, one new Kraków club date is on sale: Saturday 26 September 2026 at 19:30 at Globus Music Club, listed by Ticketmaster Poland and mirrored by other event aggregators. There are no wider tour announcements beyond this home‑city activity in 2026; the band’s rhythm remains monthly clubs, festival July, and occasional special shows.

What the show is like now

The band’s current club sets are compact, social and standard‑heavy. The recurring Kraków series The Jazz Room—staged at Klub Pod Jaszczurami off the Rynek—lists a 60‑minute duration and frames the music explicitly as a trip through New Orleans repertoire. Recent audience reviews on Fever’s Kraków listings (December 2025 to January 2026) describe Boba Jazz Band “like old wine” and praise the atmosphere, with at least one note that the set felt short. In clubs such as Globus, start times are 19:30 and seatings are informal; support acts are uncommon on these house bills, which present a single headliner for the evening. As for repertoire, the old favourites still surface—What a Wonderful World, Sweet Georgia Brown, On the Sunny Side of the Street, 12th Street Rag, High Society—arranged for the sextet’s front‑line weave. The sum remains what it has long been with Boba Jazz Band: a compact, good‑humoured survey of trad‑jazz standards played by Kraków lifers who know how to make them move.