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.

Read More

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!

Read More

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.

Read More

Jachna Buhl - Atropina (Requiem, 2014) ***½

By Stef

Trumpeter Wojtek Jachna and drummer Jacek Buhl continue with their successful duo, and if I'm not mistaken, this is their fourth album, with the fifth being released last week.

They have not altered their approach of electronically modified music that hesitates between jazz and techno at times, with acoustic drumming that could be misinterpreted for a drum machine (or is it?) and Jachna's trumpet is processed and fed back in various layers of sound. Nils Petter Molvaer and Rob Mazurek come to mind at times, and these are not bad references. There is power and electricity to be heard in tracks such as "Nocny Pocigą" and beautiful lyricism on tracks such as "Czarne Stopy", or avant-garde try-outs as in "UKF".

Even if it is not ground-breaking, it is very pleasant to listen to, and to be honest, the type of music I need this morning. Enjoy!

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

 

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Tomasz Sikorski & Julius Eastman - Unchained (Bolt, 2014)

By Stef
When I heard the first track of this album, called "Evil Nigger", I was perplexed by its title, but even more by the music itself. The composer is Julius Eastman, an African American classical composer who passed away in 1990. It's a lenghty composition for four pianos, here performed by Emilia Sitarz, Bartek Wąsik, Joanna Duda and Mischa Kozłowski, and it's absolutely amazing for its strange combination of frivolity and darkness. It sounds light and repetitive, with phrases that move like long grass in the wind, almost dancing and joyful, only to come down again in dark rumbling chords full of dread and ill omen.

As the liner notes point out "Eastman could be called a maximalist, which is a strange type of minimalism", an interesting description but that's exactly how he sounds. The limited set of core themes and the repetitiveness are typical ingredients of minimalism, but at the same time Eastman makes it a very expansive composition, soaring almost.

The two shorter central tracks are by Polish composer Tomasz Sikorski, composed for two pianos, here played by Emilia Sitarz and Bartek Wąsik. Even if of a different nature, his style fits well with the end of "Evil Nigger" leading to a nice transition in calmer territory in which repetitive phrases are rhythmically juxtaposed, creating a strange sense of familiarity and surprise. "Diaphony For Two Pianos", the next piece, is more playful then shifts into quiet musings.

The album is book-ended on the other side by another long Eastman composition, called "Gay Guerrilla" (he clearly did not shy away from controversial titles), a piece that keeps a steady repetitive basis that changes in intensity, density, power and drama, alternating with a quiet vulnerability and sensitive responses.

In short, some of the music here is phenomenal, and a real find for someone like me who is relatively ignorant of classical music. And if you have any doubts that four grand pianos could play together in perfect interplay, doubt no longer. I will refrain from rating the album (who am I to evaluate classical music?), yet I can highly recommend it.

Read More