He is known for his rock, punk, experimental, jazz and freely improvised projects. For quite a few years now, he has also been a leading percussionist on the nation-wide rural traditional music scene, on which he is famous for his outstanding freedom in the use of triple rhythms in his jaz playing. Gwadera has a passion for vintage drums and cymbals, and heappreciates VHS, and other magnetic tapes of all kinds.
In his compostition, "Trzeciak's Head’, Gary Gwadera pays tribute to the work of Wacław Trzeciak, a master of oberek rhythms and a forgotten jaz drummer* from świętokrzyskie region. From the few stories he left behind, we discover aprofile of an uncompromising folk artist who retires from musical life when rural dancefloors are flooded with "pavement" music based on duple rhythms that bore him. However, one element of these roots of disco polo absorbs him completely: the electronic sound of the drums. At home, Trzeciak experiments with oberek rhythms, enriching them with various tones extracted from a percussion module made by Polmuz, at the time a modern device. Unfortunately, we will not know what the results of these attempts were, as (probably) nothing has been documented.
Gwadera attempts to recreate Trzeciak's explorations on a custom-built acoustic junk drum kit (based on drums and cymbals made by Polish manufacturers from the 70s and 80s),combined with electronic samples of Polmuz's Ed-51 module from the 1980s.
Piotr Gwadera received the second prize ‘for his magnetic personality, musical imagination and unique combination of roots and avant-garde elements’", as well as the 'Golden Goose' prize granted for the best instrumentalist ‘for his virtuoso approach to mazurka rhythms on an unusual (percussion) instrument’ at the Polish Radio Folk Music Competition -New Tradition 2024.
His main bands are: Radical Polish Ansambl, Odpoczno, L.Stadt. He has collaborated with Bernhard Lang, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Steven Bernstein, Marcin Masecki and Antoni Gralak, among others.
*jaz (pol, “Dżaz”) not jazz. A minimalistic drum set that appeared in Europe after WWI along with American jazz artists. It became popular in the Polish rural music scene after WWII. (source: Bieńkowski/Radiowe Centrum Kultury Ludowej)