Tigersapp, the debut album from Newcastle multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter Szymon Borzestowski (best known by his first name, or simply ‘Szym’ by his siblings), was one of the most celebrated releases of 2015.
Nominated for a J Award and an ARIA, as well as receiving glowing five-star reviews, his music witnessed a surge of adulation and praise. The only person who wasn’t there to see how much joy Tigersapp brought to listeners’ lives was Borzestowski himself – after a long struggle with mental health and depression, Szymon took his own life at the end of 2012 at the age of 23.
“Music was always such a huge part of our growing up,” says Eva Borzestowski, one of Szymon’s three siblings, who works as a high school drama teacher. “Mum and Dad got me into piano and violin at an early age, and as my brothers started coming through they all began playing as well. Kub [eldest brother Kubush] got into playing guitar, Szym wanted to play the clarinet and Dom [now of Gang Of Youths] just couldn’t stop hitting things, so we knew we had to get him a drum kit. Szym was the one who just kept going and going – he learned clarinet, then saxophone, then bass, then he taught himself how to play guitar and then learned how to sing.”
Szymon’s prodigious abilities behind more or less any kind of instrument thrown his way inevitably led to him composing his own music. He remained incredibly private about it for many years, and only decided to let others in on it after constant encouragement from his siblings.
“He did composition for his main focus for his HSC music class,” recalls Eva. “He was always showing us little ideas here and there – I think he even put something up on MySpace. Only a few friends and close friends would have access to his music. He was always second-guessing whether what he was doing was good or not. He’d sit at the piano and run through something that’s just brilliant, and we’d all do a double take. ‘What was that?’ we’d keep asking, and he’d always just play it down the way that he did – ‘Oh, it’s just an idea, it’s nothing.’”
Eventually, after graduating from high school, Szymon travelled through Europe by himself. While overseas, he received an expression of interest from EMI about releasing the album he had been working on, which ended up being Tigersapp. Upon returning home, he set to finishing it, although it was ultimately shelved sometime in 2010 after his battles with depression began getting the best of him and he started to isolate himself from both his family and his music. In spite of this, his family – as well as EMI reps Mark Holland and Craig Hawker – never gave up on either Szymon himself or the Tigersapp project, eventually piecing it together some two-and-a-half years after his untimely death.
“We tried to keep it as close to the original project as possible,” says Eva. “My brothers knew the songs inside out – I had moved out of home by the time Szym was working on the album, so it was my brothers who ended up making a lot of the executive decisions over the mixing. They knew exactly what Szym wanted the songs to sound like. It was a tough process at times – the guy who was doing the final mixes was this guy over in New York, and so we’d constantly be going back and forth with him trying to get it right. It was amazing what this album did to people. Mark and Craig started their own label just so they could put it out and get people to hear it.”
Szymon never performed any songs from Tigersapp live – or indeed, performed live at all beyond playing and singing in church with his family growing up. This July, however, the surviving Borzestowski siblings – along with a slew of special guests – will perform at Splendour In The Grass under the banner of In Loving Memory Of Szymon. Here, they will perform Tigersapp in its entirety – something the family had considered previously, but had never known how to execute.
“It was Evan [Davis] from Splendour who hit us up after he got a hold of the record,” says Eva. “It’s such a privilege to bring this music to such a huge audience, and it’s all happening on account of Evan and Mark just loving this music and pushing us to replicate it in a live way. Kub has a very similar vocal timbre to that of Szym’s, so he’s going to be leading a lot of the vocals and playing the acoustic guitar. There’s so many layers, so it requires a lot of different roles to be dished out – lots of synth and percussion. My husband is in the band as well, who’ll be playing a lot of the guitar parts.”
Eva is particularly excited about getting to sing in harmony with her immediate family, adding: “It’s just not something that we get to do all that often. We’ve all played in bands and sung on different things, but when we get together to sing it’s something that’s just so nice. We already know the show is going to be quite special just because of that.”
In Loving Memory Of Szymon play Splendour In The Grass 2016 at North Byron Parklands, Friday July 22 – Sunday July 24.Tigersapp is out now through Eloper.
