
Marcin Kaletka - tenor & soprano saxophones
Szymon Mika - guitar
Max Mucha - double bass
David Hodek - drums
PRIVATE EDITION
We See The Light 59/62
SOLITON 1048
By Adam Baruch
This is an album by two veteran Polish Jazz musicians: guitarist/composer Krzysztof Puma Piasecki and saxophonist/composer Adam Wendt, recorded live at the early days of the pandemic (when such things were still possible) in the famous Polish Jazz club Pod Filarami. Rapper Eskaubei (a.k.a. Bartłomiej Skubisz) joins the duo on one track and adds some electronics on others. The album presents twelve original compositions: five by Piasecki, four by Wendt and three co-composed by them both.
The music is all melody based, moving between Blues/Fusion influences (Piasecki) and mainstream Jazz (Wendt), offering mostly beautiful melodic themes, full of typical Polish melancholy. The entire atmosphere of the album is unique, with the spooky ambience of the empty club and the poignant uncertainty of the pandemic influencing the proceedings.
Both Piasecki and Wendt perform brilliantly and their obvious mutual respect and understanding, as well as vast performing experience are immediately apparent here. Despite the limited instrumentation and the rather unusual guitar/sax pairing, the music sound just perfect and lacks nothing more to express the emotions involved. Piasecki's superb guitar parts, both as accompanist and soloist, are simply breathtaking. Wendt adds wave after wave of heartwrenching emotion and together the duo is as perfect as one might wish for.
Overall this is a beautiful album, full of great music and masterful performances, which is not trying to dazzle or surprise but concentrates on communicating music at its purest and most emotional form, which works here perfectly. The album's optimistic title certainly has a bit of prophecy in it, with the end of the pandemic now in sight. This album is highly recommended to guitar fanatics, as it offers some highly unusual craft, but also to all music lovers, who can enjoy it in its purest form.
Discipline Of Sun Ra
ASTIGMATIC 015
By Adam Baruch
The Polish Jazz ensemble EABS continues to produce young and bouncy contemporary Jazz, based on the tradition but at the same time sparkling with contemporary Pop culture and universally good taste, which naturally makes them extremely likeable to the young listeners. Following their interpretations of Polish Jazz classics they now move to the international scene taking up on the music of Sun Ra as the basis of their new album. Keyboardist Marek Pędziwiatr, bassist Paweł Stachowiak, drummer Marcin Rak, saxophonist Olaf Węgier, trumpeter Jakub Kurek and percussionist/sound effects man Spisek Jednego (a.k.a. Piotr Skorupski) dissect seven original compositions by Sun Ra, the Jazz cosmonaut, created between 1957 and 1979 and give them a kick towards the dancing floor.
The interpretations are pretty bold and one might wonder if the composer himself would have recognized his own compositions in most cases, but as far as I am concerned this music is way more acceptable to me than the original compositions, which of course speaks volumes as to my personal appreciation of Ra's music, which I find exceptionally boring. With the twist added by EABS, it finally does make sense and the lads certainly seem to have a lot of fun with it, which is fine with me.
As strange as it might sound, to me this is probably the best studio work by EABS so far, since they finally crystallized their formulas and managed to achieve the ideal mix of melodic riffs, extended soloing, sense of humor and fun, all combined together to perfection. As a result listening to this album is unadulterated fun from start to finish, creating a sort of idiosyncratic sub genre of Jazz, which is purified wonderful weirdness. I mean where else would one come across Free Form soloing, polyrhythmic banging and constantly shifting tempi, rapping and sound effects all making such wonderful sense together? Zappaesque madness at it's best…
Komeda, Ostatnia Retrospekcja
By Adam Baruch
This is the third album by Polish Jazz quintet Weezdob Collective, which comprises of harmonica player Kacper Smoliński, saxophonist Kuba Marciniak, guitarist Piotr Scholz, bassist Damian Kostka and drummer Adam Zagórski. The album presents eleven original compositions, two by Marciniak, four by Smoliński, one by Kostka, two by Scholz, one by Zagórski and finally one co-composed by Kostka and Zagórski. The text (in Polish) included on the album was written by Tomasz Lach and recited by Mariusz Zaniewski. Date and place of recording are not specified on the album's artwork.
As the album's title suggests, this is yet another project related to the legendary Godfather of Polish Jazz, pianist / composer Krzysztof Komeda. Despite the fact that Komeda's name and music was over time abused, misused and mistreated obsessively countless times, the temptation to gain attention is obviously stronger than decency and good taste.
The pretext this time is the text written by Lach, Komeda's adopted son, which consists of a series of reflections about his adoptive father, incorporated into the music written by the members of the ensemble, creating sort of radio sketch, a popular form of radio broadcast before television took over.
The music is series of unrelated composition, which have nothing to do with Komeda's music per se and if the intention was to create at least am atmospheric similarity, it fails to do so as far as I am concerned. These rather forgettable themes have simply no coherent continuity and although played in the background of the text being recited, offer little, if any, relation to the text itself.
The members of the ensemble are obviously well schooled and experienced musicians; hopefully they will make better decisions in the future. Overall this album not only does not pay any tribute to Komeda's name and status, but is a rather cynical and opportunistic venture, with no Artistic merit. Combined with a murky sound quality and incorrect balance between the music and the recitation, it is even difficult to listen to.
By Adam Baruch
This is an album by veteran Polish Jazz pianist/composer Andrzej Jagodziński recorded with his fabulous trio with bassist Adam Cegielski and drummer Czesław Bartkowski. As the title suggests, the album is dedicated to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and presents six of his compositions, beautifully transformed into the Jazz idiom.
Playing Bach by Jazz musicians is of course nothing new and the romance goes back to the early 1960s, when French pianist/composer Jacques Loussier made a grand career by Jazzing up Bach’s compositions for the crowds, and many other Jazz musicians since tried to tackle this task, including Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau, with varying results. Bach’s music, which undoubtedly is one of the absolute pinnacles of Human artistic ingenuity, in most cases is best served by being left alone in its original form and shape, with rare exceptions.
I am happy to see (or rather hear) that Jagodzinski and his trio are up to the challenge of successfully transforming Bach’s music into the Jazz realm, served by their great sensitivity, talents and of course extensive experience. They manage to avoid trivializing this great music, keeping the original sense of flow, melody and rhythm intact, and adding the Jazzy ornamentations with carful respect of the original compositions. This is not altogether surprising taking into consideration the sublime Jazz oriented interpretations of the music by Polish National composer Frederic Chopin, which Jagodziński and his cohorts managed to create in the past.
The performances are absolutely stellar, as expected, and although the piano is naturally in the epicenter of the sonic experience, the rhythm section also contributes some superb parts, which deserve no less admiration. Personally I hear a bit of Chopin on these interpretations of Bach, which again is hardly surprising, as Chopin’s music flows in the blood (or sub consciousness) of every Polish musician at all times.
Overall this is a wonderful album in every sense, both emotionally and intellectually, which deserves to be heard by every true lover of Jazz-Classical Fusion, Bach’s followers and Jazz piano trio enthusiasts all over the world. A true elixir for mind and body at these crazy days of misfortune and suffering.
On a personal note, almost exactly to a day last year I had the immense pleasure to attend a concert at a small Jazz club outside of Warsaw, where messieurs Jagodziński, Cegielski and Bartkowski (and others) were performing. This was an unforgettable evening of great music and friendship, especially since it was the last live concert I managed to attend before the pandemic and the last time I was abroad…
AUDIO CAVE 2020/013
By Adam Baruch
This is the sixth album by Polish quartet Tatvamasi, which documents a series of music meetings held under the slogan of the album's title, recorded over a period of couple of years by the four members of the ensemble: guitarist Grzegorz Lesiak, saxophonist Tomasz Piątek, bassist Łukasz Downar and drummer Krzysztof Redas and a plethora of guests from Poland and abroad, including Avant-Garde drummers Vasco Trilla from Spain and Peter Orins from France. The album presents seven compositions, all uncredited and assumed to be a result of improvisations by the participating musicians.
The music, as expected from the underlying concept, is a series of extended improvisations, based on sketchy melodic fragments and rhythm patterns, which characterizes Improvised Music. It preserves to some extent the usual Jazz-Rock Fusion modus operandi of Tatvamasi that was dominating their earlier recordings, but expands the horizons and embraces Free Improvisation, basically letting things happen on the fly as they develop. The three pieces recorded by a quartet, with vocalist Marta Grzywacz (and without Piątek) are definitely the high point of the entire album pointing to a direction worth pursuing.
To be perfectly honest, as much as I like Tatvamasi, this stuff just doesn't work for me as well as I expected it would. I admit to being somewhat fed up with the Improvised Music recordings that the Polish scene produces en mass and often without any selective process on one hand, and the fact that throwing a group of unrelated musicians in one room and let them play whatever comes to mind very rarely guarantees a spectacular result on the other hand. I appreciate the will to explore and search, and the courage to try something new, but hope this is a one time extravaganza, and the music will return to more productive exploration in the future.
Overall this is an interesting experiment, and as such worthy of appreciation, but the resulting music, stripped of the circumstantial excitement, is rather pale summa summarum, with just occasional interesting moments. Sorry guys, it's just me.
Krzysztof Kobyliński
Spero
HEVHETIA 0205
By Adam Baruch
Spacetime
PRIVATE EDITION 2020
By Adam Baruch
This is the second album by British Fusion quintet Groove Razors, founded in 2009 by Polish (resident in London) keyboardist / composer Tomasz Zyrmont and drummer Laurie Lowe. The other members of the quintet are saxophonist / flautist Alan Short, guitarist Nik Svarc and bassist Chris Webb. Two additional musicians play on selected tracks. The album presents nine original compositions, all by Zyrmont except one track co-credited to all members of the band.
The music is classic electric Fusion, based on nice, well structured and put together melodic themes, which serve mainly as basis for the extended soloing. There is a well balanced mixture or ballads and up tempo numbers and the album is overall a very nice listening experience.
All members of the quintet perform well and are able to deliver solidly structured soli, supported amicably by the rhythm section. There is really absolutely nothing wrong with this music, except for the fact that is sounds like something that was conceived and recorded in the early 1970s, when Fusion was fresh and exciting, but sadly soon after got stuck in the same patterns for the 50 years following.
Overall this is a nice Funky, Groovy Fusion album, excellently performed but hardy innovative or challenging, with countless similar albums recorded over the years. For Fusion fans this does not get much better than this, so it is definitely worth checking out!
Stanisław Słowiński - violin
Solo Violin Avantgarde
INFRA ART 2020
By Krzysztof Komorek
Huapango Nights
By Adam Baruch
This is the debut album by Mexican (resident in Poland) Jazz violinist Eduardo Bortolotti recorded in a quartet setting with Columbian (also resident in Poland) bassist Edilson Sanchez and two Polish musicians: keyboardist Mateusz Sobiechowski and drummer Bartek Staromiejski. Percussionist Alberto Suazo guests on selected tracks. The album presents nine pieces, four of which are arrangements of Mexican Folk tunes and five are original compositions by Bortolotti.
The music is typical Jazz-World Fusion with strong Mexican/Latin tinge, skillfully performed by the participants. The sound of the violin is certainly quite unusual in this musical environment and takes a moment to get used to, but it certainly works out eventually. The closing track offers a much open and free attitude and perhaps hints as to Bortolotti's future development.
Bortolotti, who studied with leading Polish Jazz violinists: Marcin Hałat and Henryk Gembalski, is certainly well schooled and his technical proficiency is beyond reproach. His personal style still needs to be crystallized, which is sure to happen in time, combining the Polish influences and his Mexican roots and creating a unique voice.
The rest of the players are also skilled performers, with the two Polish musicians having already proven recording experience. They all support the leader amicably and the group sound is coherent and well balanced. Overall this is a promising debut album, which shows potential and talent, and is definitely worth checking out, especially since the violin in Jazz is relatively obscure and deserves wider recognition.