Antoni Sliwa - flute
Lech Wieleba - bass
Jozef Eliasz - drums
Marian Szarmach - drums
Mariusz Stopinski - trumpet
Piotr Sapieja - oercussion
SOLITON 231
By Adam Baruch
This is the third installment
in the excellent archival series documenting Polish Jazz created in the
country's Tricity on the Baltic Sea, one of
the important centers where Polish Jazz thrives and over the years produced
numerous first-rate musicians and superb bands. The series presents material,
which in most cases never previously appeared in any form and therefore is of
immense historic importance.
This chapter presents the Antykwintet
ensemble, which was a relatively short lived quartet / quintet founded in 1978 and
active for about four years, but unfortunately never managed to record even one
album under their name, which sadly was the fate of many Polish Jazz artists
during the Socialist regime. However they did participate three times (1978,
1979 & 1980) in the Jazz Nad Odra festival in Wroclaw, where all of the material on this
album comes from.
Antykwintet was founded by
pianist / composer Leszek Kulakowski and flautist Antoni Sliwa (who's siblings
played with two other ensembles documented by this series: Baszta and Rama 111).
The initial quartet also included bassist Lech Wieleba and drummer Jozef
Eliasz. That quartet also included percussionist Piotr Sapieja as a guest
musician. Later on the quartet was expanded to a quintet with the addition of
trumpeter Mariusz Stopnicki and Eliasz was replaced by Marian Szarmach.
The music includes seven
compositions, six of which are originals by Kulakowski and one is by American
guitarist Barney Kessel, all recorded live as mentioned earlier. The sound
quality is not great, but remastered it is certainly good enough to be enjoyed.
The live setting allows for expanded treatments of the compositions, four of
which are over ten minutes and one over seventeen minutes long. This means
there are ample opportunities to hear long solos, mostly by the pianists (on
both acoustic and electric piano) and the flautists. Since the flute is sadly
rarely used as the front solo instrument in Jazz, this album should be greatly
interesting to flute aficionados. The quintet with the trumpet / flute front
line is also very unusual, almost unique in fact, which is another interesting
aspect of this album.
The music is modern mainstream,
not revolutionary but certainly interesting and quite innovative at the time.
The live setting again allows for a lot of freedom, especially during the
extended solos, which, assuming the ensemble would have continued together
might have developed into more imaginative pastures, but alas we'll never know.
In any case this is certainly worth revisiting some thirty plus years later.
This is another great piece of
Polish Jazz history, which should definitely be told and preserved as part of
the country's Cultural Heritage. Kudos to Marcin Jacobson for creating this
series and keeping it going!
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