Hania Rani

Hania Rani is a pianist, composer and musician who was born in Gdansk and splits her life between Warsaw, where she has her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works.

Her debut album ‘Esja’, a beguiling collection of solo piano pieces, on Gondwana Records was released to international acclaim on April 5th 2019 including nominations in 5 categories in the Polish music industries very own Grammys, the Fryderyki, and winning the Discovery of the Year 2019 in the Empikchain's Bestseller Awards and the prestigious Sankiaward for the most interesting new face of Polish music chosen by Polish journalists.

Rani also composed the music for her first full length movie "I Never Cry" directed by Piotr Domalewski and for the play "Nora" directed by Michał Zdunik. Her song "Eden" was used as a soundtrack of a short movie by Małgorzata Szumowska for Miu Miu's movie cycle "Women's Tales".

Her follow-up album, the expansive, cinematic, ‘Home’, was released on May 15th and finds Rani expanding her range: adding vocals and subtle electronics to her music as well as being joined on some tracks by bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmijak. The album reunites her with recording engineers Piotr Wieczorek and Ignacy Gruszecki (Monochrom Studio) and the tracks were again mixed by Gijs van Klooster in his studio in Amsterdam and by Piotr Wieczorekin Warsaw ( Ombelico and Come Back Home). Home was mastered by Zino Mikoreyin Berlin (known for his work on albums by artists such as Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds). For Rani, Home, is very much a continuation of the work she started on Esja, “the completion of the sentence” as she puts it. The album offers a metaphorical journey: the story of places that become our home sometimes by chance, sometimes by choice. It is the story of leaving a place that is familiar and the journey that follows it. Home opens with the fragment of the short story "Loneliness" by Bruno Schulz, which can be seen as a parable of a journey that does not necessarily mean going beyond the physical door but can signify going beyond the symbolic limits of our knowledge and imagination.

In February 2023, Hania Rani released her new soundtrack to the documentary “On Giacometti” directed by Susanna Fanzun. Recorded and shot in the Giacometti Atelier in Stampa, Switzerland, Hania Rani was invited by the director Susanna Fanzun to compose a selection of delicate recordings

Hania’s third solo album ‘Ghosts‘ was released on October 6th 2023, and features Patrick Watson, Ólafur Arnalds and Duncan Bellamy (from Portico Quartet) and was released on Gondwana Records on October 6 2023.

 

“With ‘Ghosts’ I wanted to start something from scratch, picking tools and stories I was not familiar with, but which felt dear to me. ‘Ghosts’ is a story about life and death, light and darkness, real and unreal. It’s an attempt to touch ultimate qualities and craft my own mythologies; to face fears, take a deep dive into things that scare me but also seduce me subconsciously. ‘Ghosts’  collects all of these things together, mixing the past, present and the future into a new sound of mine.”

 

Newly released (09/27/24) ‘Nostalgia‘ is Rani’s first ‘real’ live album, recorded in a place of deep personal and artistic significance: the Polish Radio studios in Warsaw. Through Nostalgia, Hania presents the studios in her own perspective, as somewhere unique and unknown. A place of work, but something more. A place of ghosts and hidden meanings, of inspiration and mystery. By juxtaposing her music with evocative analogue photographs of the studios, Rani provides a closer look at her artistic journey – from composing to performance and recording – all seen through her own eyes. For Rani, it is an experimental step – the first time she brings her sonic and visual worlds together in a combined presentation.