Polish Jazz Week: Wrap-up/Round-up

And so we wrap up Polish Jazz Week much like we began, with a round up of recent releases and an invitation to listen to the music we wrote about this week with Martin's "Freejazzblog on Air" on SWR2 this evening. If you are unable to tune in at 11 p.m. wherever SWR2 reaches in and near Germany, you can listen online for the next week.

Polish Jazz – Conclusion and Outlook

by Martin Schray

After reading so many reviews this week you might wonder why the Polish improv scene is so special (compared to other Eastern European countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine or even Russia). During my research for the radio show I contacted Maciej Nowotny from polishjazz.com (among others) and he told me that it has been one of the most crucial aspects of the Polish scene that Polish jazz has always been connected to film, fine arts, literature and philosophy (for example existentialism in the 1950s). This has been handed down from generation to generation which has resulted in the fact that the Polish intelligentsia has been very interested in jazz up to today. He even said that it would be almost impossible to be called intellectual if you are not deeply into that kind of music. So, after the fall of the iron curtain, a new scene emerged which is very interested in new things and which is very well connected with musicians from all over the world. It is mainly due to this new generation that free jazz is relatively successful in Poland, because they try to express what’s important for them and what’s going on around them.

What is also helpful is the fact that there are great labels supporting this scene. They run their businesses out of passion, commercial interests are only secondary to them. Names like NotTwo, ForTune, Kilogram, Multikulti and Bocian are only the tip of the iceberg. And since the musicians do not get rich by selling their CDS and LPs it is vital that there are great venues like Alchemia in Krakow, for example.

Considering all this I guess we will hear a lot from Polish musicians in the future. And we are looking forward to it.

Irek Wojtczak & The Fonda-Stevens Group - Wojtczak NY Connection: Folk Five (ForTune, 2015) ****

Polish jazz is not only restricted to Poland, it actually is an open and attractive field for musicians from all over the world. As mentioned in the introduction to this week, labels like ForTune, NotTwo, Multikulti, Kilogram or Bocian have an excellent reputation and venues like Alchemia in Kraków belong to the best clubs for free jazz in the whole world. A musician like Ken Vandermark, for example, has established a project like Resonance Ensemble, a mix of Polish and Chicago musicians (sometimes augmented by Scandinavian musicians), that has recorded remarkable albums (like Head Above Water). Wojtczak’s NY Connection is a similar collaboration.

Irek Wojtczak is a Polish saxophonist and for Wojtczak NY Connection he is joined by the New York City-based Fonda/Stevens Group consisting of bassist Joe Fonda and pianist Michael Stevens plus trumpeter Herb Robertson and drummer Harvey Sorgen. The result is an exciting and very elegant brew of splendid modern jazz mixed with Polish folk music like on “Cztery Mile Za Warszawa”, for example. It is a piece in which Polish influences clash with a New Orleans funeral march atmosphere as well as with Robertson’s cool jazz trumpet – you might call it Polish blues. In general compositions like “Weselny” should be played late at night (or in the very early morning), they are of exquisite beauty, Kenny Wheeler’s last albums seem to have been an obvious inspiration.

There are also distant polka intersperses in two pieces, “Pod Gazem” and “Kiej Jo Ide W Pole”, the first one a piano solo for Stevens that reminds of  Keith Jarrett’s “My Melody at Night, with you”, the latter a mixture of pre-free-jazz Coleman and Charles Mingus starring Wojtczak on bass clarinet playing an outstanding solo.

Like the above mentioned Vandermark group this connection seems to work marvelously as well, there is some kind of affinity of spirit in Polish and American jazz. And above all the album comes with a great cover as well.

Mazur Neuringer Duo - The Kraków Letters (ForTune, 2014) ****½

Another transatlantic cooperation is this duo recording of American saxophonist Keir Neuringer and Polish avant-garde jazz acoustic bass guitarist Rafal Mazur, a duo that has already released three albums (Improwizje was reviewed by Stef in 2010). I first came across Neuringer when I read Stefan’s review on his solo album Ceremonies Out of the Air and was immediately deeply impressed by Neuringer’s extraordinary command of the instrument.

Communicating with another musician makes Neuringer’s approach even more gripping. The two sound as if Luc Ex and Colin Stetson had joined each other, Mazur playing his bass more like a guitar and Neuringer delving in circular breathing. But there is more to their music, there is an immense intensity, an almost brutal expression and a dedication which is absolutely uncompromised, which can be seen at challenging staccato lines and wild runs (“Letter #3”). Although the sound of the acoustic bass guitar needs getting used to the emotional quality of this music is almost breath-taking.

Listen to it here:

Łukasz Borowicki Trio - People, Cats & Obstacles (ForTune, 2014) ***½

Guitarist Łukasz Borowicki’s trio consists of Polish bassist Mariusz Praśniewski and Danish drummer Kasper Tom Christiansen. Borowicki’s sound meanders between early John McLaughlin and Raoul Björkenheim’s excursions with Scorch Trio, his style can be edgy, boisterous and distorted, then again he is also melodic and accessible - often in the same track as in the opening piece “Happy Summer”. The compositions include notated parts and completely free form and present the band as a tight unit. Most pieces are full of structural and textural changes (as in “Hiss and Rumble” with its allusions to minimal music), the musicianship is extraordinary, bass and drums are supportive and unobtrusive. People, Cats and Obstacles is a fine debut album of a band we should keep an eye on. Maybe this is an album for you, Paul.

Adam Pieronczyk Quartet – A-Trane Nights (ForTune2014) ****

And last but not least an archive recording by Polish heavyweight jazz legend Adam Pierończyk (saxes)  who is accompanied by Australian trombonist/didgeridoo player Adrian Mears, American bassist Anthony Cox and Polish drummer Krzysztof Dziedzic, so we have another international collaboration here. The album is a live recording  from 2008, based on a  studio recording of the same material, which was already released as “El Buscador” in 2010.

A-Trane Nights is classic modern jazz, there are hardly any free elements on this album. However, it’s not mainstream either. Pierończyk has developed a voice of his own between notated melodies and riffs and excellent soloing  work, he leaves a lot of space for his fellow musicians and while Cox mainly tries to support trombone and sax, Dziedzic sometimes interprets his role like an additional soloist. Especially the two tracks with the didgeridoo create a very laid back atmosphere.

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Dominik Strycharski, Ksawery Wójciński, Paweł Szpura - Prophetic Fall (Not Two, 2014) ***½

By Martin Schray
                                 
The recorder is an instrument I am almost allergic to. The reason has to do with my job. At my former school all the students in the fifth grade had to learn it and sometimes they did that on the stairs in the hallways or out in the open (in summer). So you couldn’t escape “Morning has broken” in recorder versions. But recently I saw a show on German TV with German classical flutist Dorothee Oberlinger playing a Scottish dance – and it was fascinating.

So, when I saw that this album was starring Dominik Strycharski on all kinds of recorders and sopilka (a woodwind instrument of the flute family used by Ukrainian folk instrumentalists), I was at least interested what he does with them, especially since he was augmented by Ksawery Wójciński on bass and fabulous drummer Paweł Szpura.

All in all, the trio is mainly interested in combining Klezmer melodies and Ukrainian folklore with free jazz, which works surprisingly fine, for example in “Exactly Confused”, the opening track of the album. But the highlight of the album is the meditative ballad “I was asking” with its dark soundscape. Interesting approach.

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Gerard Lebik, Piotr Damasiewicz, Gabriel Ferrandini - veNN circles (Bocian, 2014) ****

By Martin Schray
                                   
veNN circles is a typical Bocian release, therefore definitely not for the faint of heart. Gerard Lebik (electronics), Piotr Damasiewicz (trumpet) and RED Trio’s Gabriel Ferrandini (dr) draw you down to their personal hell consisting of distant, muffled, agonized cries that seem to come out of a huge anthill populated by tiny, spooky creatures. The sounds are intimidating echoes, the electronics cause a ringing in the ears providing an atmosphere of constant drizzle. Ferrandini’s percussion remind of objects falling down from nowhere, while Damasiewicz’s style seems to be based on Nate Wooley’s more adventurous albums. This could be an alternative soundtrack for David Lynch’s Eraserhead – creepy, painful, but also exciting!

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Tomasz Stanko – Polin (Polin, 2015) ***

By Stef
Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has been one of the leading figures in modern Polish jazz for decades, and he gave your humble servant hours and hours of listening joy with albums such as "Lontano", "Leosia", "Litania" and "Matka Joana" and "Bluish", just to name my favorite ones.

Stanko embodies modernity in jazz, creating new visions of expansive sounds while remaining meditative and intimate. With some the albums mentioned above he dug deep in the darkest levels of melancholy and sadness that you can think of in music, while at the same time exploring how sound and band interplay could even deepen that feeling, lengthening open space, silence, and once in a while even dissonance.

And for sure, he has done more than the ECM albums that get my preference here, yet he had carved out his own vision of music, created his own unmistakable sound, and you can only applaud that an established musician leaves his own idiom to explore even further. Yet sadly, Stanko leaves his own idiom just to join the American mainstream, with tunes and arrangements that you've heard a million times before. And that's what we get on this album.

It was commissioned by the Museum Of The History Of Polish Jews, and the band consists of Stańko on trumpet, Ravi Coltrane on sax, David Virelles on piano, Dezron Douglas on double bass, and Kush Abadey on drums. An excellent band, and the interplay is also good, but what does it bring us that we did not somehow already heard somewhere? A nice mainstream album, but that's not really a compliment for somebody of Stanko's stature.

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TOM Trio - Radical Moves (ForTune, 2014) ****

By Stef
Almost two years ago, Tom Trio released its debut album, launched with great acclaim in Poland and abroad. The trio is led by Tomasz Dąbrowski on trumpet, with Nils Bo Davidsen on bass and Anders Mogensen on drums, both from Denmark, the country where Dąbrowski  actually resides.

Like on his previous album, the musicianship is phenomenal as is the interplay between the three band members. All compositions are by Dąbrowski, quite open themes and structures which allow for enhanced space for improvisation.

The music is real modern jazz, inventive and clever, but not free jazz at all, and definitely not as "radical" as the album's title might suggest, with short and compact pieces, around four minutes long, which forces the musicians to keep the focus and the intensity on the core material.

Dąbrowski's tone is soft and warm, and with the exception on one improvisation on the opening track, not much extended techniques are used, but that's not the point either. The real strength of the album lies with the strong musicianship and wonderful fluidity of the interaction, which by itself makes this an album worthy of consideration.

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Bartlomiej Oles & Tomasz Dabrowski - Chapters (Fenommedia, 2015) ****½

By Stef
I am not sure what happened to the Oles brothers (Bartlomiej on drums and Marcin on bass) in the last years, but after a very prolific period of new albums between 2005 and 2008, new releases were sparse in the last years, and I had been on the look-out for new material, because I like them a lot. So this year they're back with several albums, and more to come on this.

On this album we find drummer Bart in a fine duo with trumpeter Tomasz Dabrowski, a very talented young musician who has figured in several of our reviews in the past years, with his own TOM Trio, with 3D and a duo album with drummer Tyshawn Sorey.

And what about this one? It's gorgeous and fantastic. It's the kind of music that makes you dance on the spot out of sheer joy with what you hear. Bart Oles is a real wizzard on the drums, full of energy and sophisticated inventiveness, the kind of drummer who keeps any listener captivated by what's happening, even when playing solo, and while keeping the core pulse going, he keeps adding almost counter-intuitive beats that are nothing less than fascinating.

Dabrowski has an incredible tone and a very creative approach without resorting to extended techniques. He is also an emotional player, able to drag the listener in and taking her on journeys of jubilant joy or more contemplative sensitivities. Can I say the following? (really, can I say this?) Polish people, my apologies, but I once fell asleep during a concert of Tomasz Stanko. I doubt this will ever happen when listening to Tomasz Dabrowski. He's that good.


Have we heard this musical approach before? Yes, of course, and therefore a five-star rating may not be appropriate, but on all other aspects, the album is, as I said, it's really great: intense, captivating, instrumental mastership, fabulous interaction, authenticiy, inventiveness, ear-candy galore ... so don't miss it.

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Fortuna & Dys - Maciejewski Variations (DUX Recording Producers, 2014) ****

By Stef
Do we care about genres? No. Do we care about fashion? No, of course we don't. We care about quality, vision, authenticity, emotional power ... things like that. Last year we were already very positive about the collaboration of Maciej Fortuna on trumpet and Krzysztof Dys on piano for their album "Tropy".

The music on this album is inspired by the Polish classical composer Roman Maciejewski, whose brother Wojciech assisted Fortuna and Dys with original manuscripts to bring this project to a good end. Yet this is not classical music. They take Maciejewski's material and change it, improvise on it, like any jazz musician would do. Like on their previous album this leads to great results, sometimes rhythmic and jazzy, often more abstract and lyrical.

Fortuna's trumpet tone is of a phenomenal clarity and purity, while Dys's piano playing is exceptional, frivolous and precise, effortlessly improvising on even the most classical-sounding pieces. But probably the most important thing is that they seem to enjoy the music, dragging the listener with them in their world of controlled beauty.

 

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Jachna, Tarwid & Karch - Sundial (Fortune, 2014) ****

By Stef
Poland has without a doubt one of the prolific jazz scenes in the world at the moment, churning out one great album after the other. Here is another one, with Wojciech Jachna on trumpet, Gregory Tarwid on piano and Albert Karch on drums.

Despite the presence of a drummer, the music sounds like chamber jazz, intimate, measured, subdued. The album also has a strong coherence, making it sound like a long suite, a feeling which is reinforced by the fact that some tracks come in several variations on the album.

The amazing thing is that Grzegorz Tarwid was born in 1994, and Albert Karch in 1993, I mean, almost yesterday, yet they sound like they've been playing together for ages. The music is also hard to pigeon-hole, shifting between classical romanticism and more abstract open-ended jazz.

Tracks like "Terpsichore's Chant" even have bluesy references à la Jarrett, while "Little Draft" is more impressionistic and meditative, whereas the title track starts like avant-garde.  "Intermezzo", the long central piece, offers much space for Tarwid for a more classical diversion, and maybe that is to the credit of Jachna that he gives these two young musicians so much space. But this space and openness is essential to their approach, resulting in fresh, free, inventive and rich music, combining classical and jazz traditions into something new.

Three fantastic musicians, and a band to follow.

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Polish Jazz Week

Polish Jazz Week

This week we are leading up to Martin’s next installment of “FreeJazzBlog on Air” with a bunch of reviews focusing on the ever expanding avant-garde jazz scene in Poland. Centering around Warsaw and Kraków this vibrant and creative scene is worthy of celebration and will be the focus of Martin's and Julia's show on Friday the 10th on German public radio’s SWR2 (airing at 11 pm and online for a week following).

After an introduction on Polish jazz history we will present an overview of the latest and most interesting releases.

A Round Up on Polish Jazz

By Martin Schray and Stef

The connection between Poland and jazz has always been a special one. After WW II, before free jazz came up, it could even be called a European center for jazz (together with Sweden and Great Britain). Although this changed with the rise of free jazz in Europe in the middle of the 1960s, when the scenes in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands became more important, Poland always had exciting and famous musicians like Krzysztof Komeda and Tomasz Stanko.  But also people who are not as well known like Andrzej Trzaskowski, whose 1965 album Synopsis (with Stanko on trumpet) already had free elements, or pianist/saxophonist Włodzimierz Nahorny, whose trio also released a real classic of European free jazz (Heart, in 1967), are inseparably linked to the European scene. Another classic album is Zbigniew Namysłowski’s Winobranie (1973) with Stanislaw Cieślak, Tomasz Szukalski, Pawel Jarzebski and Kazimierz Jonkisz.

Apart from fantastic musicians Poland has always had great festivals, labels and publications. Since 1964 there was “Jazz Forum”, a magazine which was also available in English and German since the late 1970s and which – according to Wolfram Knauer, the head of the German jazz institute – can be considered the most important jazz publication in the 1970s and 80s. At its peak it was distributed in 103 countries! It still exists (but as far as we know only in Polish).

And of course there was “Jazz Jamboree” in Warsaw, the most important jazz festival in Europe, where even people like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington or Charles Mingus played (but also free jazz musicians like Peter Brötzmann, Alex von Schlippenbach, Günter “Baby” Sommer and Conny Bauer) and which was already established in 1958.

On the other hand, the Polish free jazz scene lost its importance in the 1980s, as the scenes in Western Europe and the GDR had became more interesting; however, this changed with the fall of the iron curtain. Polish free jazz is literally booming, musicians like Mikołaj Trzaska, Wacław Zimpel, Adam Pierończyk, Mikrokolektyw or the Oleś brothers have released excellent albums. In addition, labels like NotTwo, ForTune, Kilogram, Multikulti or Bocian and venues like Alchemia in Kraków keep the tradition alive and have even put it on a new level.

P.S.:
A lot of information in this article is based on information by Ernst Nebhuth, who works for the jazz department at Ludwig Beck’s in Munich. He is one of the greatest experts on free jazz we know. Thanks a lot, Ernst.

Now – here is the music...

Sambar – Melt! (NotTwo, 2014) ****

Sambar are Paulina Owczarek and Tomasz Gadecki on baritone saxes and Melt! is their debut album which was recorded live at Alchemia in Kraków in 2013. Baritone sax duets are hard to find in improv and this one is a real bonfire of melodies, clicks and clacks, short runs and extended techniques – it’s a real journey into breath. The most interesting thing about this album is the rich timbre of these instruments, their dark and sombre sound and how the musicians intertwine. Owczarek and Gadecki circle each other, they fight and dance, but they always listen to each other respectfully. A very interesting album – not only for saxophone aficionados.

Listen to them here:

Olbrzym i Kurdupel - Work (Kilogram, 2014) ***

Sambar’s Tomasz Gadecki is also a part of Olbrzym i Kurdupel (Polish for “Giant and Dwarf”), here he plays the tenor and his partner is Marcin Bozek on bass guitar. But while Sambar is very focused and concentrated, Olbrzym i Kurdupel’s improvisations sometimes simply lead nowhere – which can be quite funny on the one hand but also a bit puzzling on the other. In “Part 3” they start elegantly next to each other, then they stop all of sudden, start anew, stop again, just to get lost somewhere. And I must admit that Bozek’s bass sound is not quite my cup of tea.

Pole – Radom (Kilogram, 2014) ****      

Pole is Jan Młynarski (drums, percussion), Peter Zabrodzki (guitar, bass, synthesizer) and Michał Górczyński (clarinets, flutes) and on the surface Radom is an album full of contradictions. On the one hand there are typical traditional Polish melodies played by the clarinet and the flute (mainly based on Jewish klezmer), on the other hand there are tons of electronic rubble, repetitive guitar riffs, absent-minded bass runs and a pulse that has gone completely wild. All of this at the very same time, for example in the opening track “Kieniewicz”. Górczyński seems to be a soulmate of Mikołaj Trzaska and Wacław Zimpel, so it’s logical that he is also part of their fabulous Ircha Quartet. Particularly on “Godzinki”, the longest track of the album, the trio develops a relentless meditative groove (at least in the first part), mainly due to Zabrodzki’s elegant, smooth bass lines and Górczyński’s repetitive licks. In the second part the track falls apart, which is nice to watch. Very Polish, very avant-garde, very good.

Kamil Szuszkiewicz - Bugle Call and Response (Wounded Knife, 2014) **½

By Stef

On this audiocassette, Polish flugelhorn player Kamil Szuszkiewicz offers us two faces of a solo performance : the A-side is acoustic, the B-side is electronically manipulated. The A-side is melancholy, intimate, refined and sad. The B-side sounds like a coffee percolator processed through a Moog synthesizer of the seventies.

Each side takes about thirteen minutes. An interesting experiment.

You can listen and download from Bandcamp or buy the cassette.

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