Mieczyslaw Kosz (1975)

 

Recently I posted about Mieczysław Kosz, one of the most significant figures in history of polish jazz. Now I return to his music with disc dedicated to him issued in White Raven Of Black Vinyl Club edition of Polish Jazz Association. Last time I wrote a lot but this time I shall keep my note short because I want music to speak for itself.

We often treat jazz and classical music as somehow opposite because of the attitude toward improvisation. This is nonsense of course. There is only one music. Moreover improvisational element in music was always present. In classical music as well until very recently when it vanished and classical music became closed genre. Great pianists of romantic era for example, Chopin, Liszt or Schumann, we know it very well, all improvised. In fact in their times ability to improvise was at least equally respected as their compositional talent.

Kosz is so unique because he improvised effortlessly in all possible genres, from classical through jazz to pop music. When we look at the program of this specific album we find besides Kosz own compositions (Signals, Before Storm, Illusion, Too Late) improvisations on well known jazz standards (Summertime, Some Days My Prince Will Come), on folk tunes (Black Eyes, Hey You Forest Violet), on polish (More Birds, Two Glasses of Wine, You Shall Not Forget Me) and international pop tunes (Michelle, Rosemary's Baby, Laura, Granada). In this selection we see first the reflection of early Kosz whose career started by playing in clubs and restaurants of Kraków, Zakopane and Warsaw but also the sheer scale of his talent that covered all music that poeple were really interested in.

And to sum up Kosz story paraphrase of classical piece by Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin Polovtzian Dances in masterful jazz interpretation (from Reminiscence album):

PS. In my both notes on Kosz I used information from wonderful book of his biographer Krzysztof Karpiński titled Only Sadness Is Beautiful. Great thanks!!!