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sobota, 24 października 2020

Piotr Mełech/Wojtek Kurek - Split Here (2019)

Piotr Mełech/Wojtek Kurek

Piotr Mełech - clarinet & bass clarinet
Wojtek Kurek - drums

Split Here

ANTENNA NON GRATA 2019/07





By Adam Baruch

This is an album by Polish Improvising Music duo comprising of clarinetist Piotr Mełech and drummer Wojciech Kurek. The album presents six improvised pieces, which are, as usual in such cases, uncredited.

Mełech is a prominent figure on the Polish Avant-Garde scene in the last decade and a prolific recording artist, associated mostly with the Multikulti label, but also releasing albums on other Polish niche labels, like the Antenna Non Grata, which released this album. Kurek, also a prolific recording artist, with about twenty albums under his belt, works as improvising musician but also composes for multimedia installations and theatre. It seems that this recording is the first cooperation between these two Artists.

As I have already stated often in my reviews of Mełech's other albums, I am a great fun of his clarinet shenanigans, and since the clarinet is one of my favorite instruments Mełech always has an open ear as far as I am concerned. He is obviously a completely unique clarinetist, who is able to take the instrument into uncharted territory time after time. He is able to play relative melodic music as well as totally Free improvisations with the same power of expression and obvious virtuosity.

I am not familiar with Kurek's other recordings, but his performances here expose his openness to dialogue and cooperation, which the duo demonstrates whenever they play together. Obviously highly skilled technically, Kurek proves to be a very supportive partner to Mełech's spacey explorations, and they are able to produce many magic moments together on this album.

Since Free/Improvised Music is a priori oriented towards very limited audiences, this album belongs to the same category. The magic that happened during the recording of this music has no guarantees to be embraced by many listeners, which sadly is almost an intrinsic characteristic of the Avant-Garde. Hopefully, since Melech has a solid following on the local scene, this music will resound in many homes, as it certainly deserves.

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