Nikola Kołodziejczyk - piano
with others
Chord Nation
FOR TUNE 0042
By Adam Baruch
This is the debut album by young Polish Jazz pianist/composer/bandleader Nikola Kołodziejczyk, recorded by a twenty five piece orchestra, with members who originate from three different countries, which presents a five-part suite, which in turn is a hybrid of contemporary Classical music, classic mainstream Big Band and Free Jazz/Improvised music. There is no doubt that this is a very ambitious project, brought into reality against all odds and one that refuses to compromise and takes no prisoners.
Although highly motivated and
certainly ingenious, this project is not quite as revolutionary or innovative
as one might imagine. In fact it continues the European orchestral Jazz
tradition, which followed a different path from the American orchestral Jazz
tradition, which flourished in the US
in the early 20th Century and was than imported into Europe and mimicked for a few decades until the
emancipation of the European Jazz in the 1960s. Since than a long line of
superb European Jazz orchestras carried the torch towards new horizons,
starting with the British orchestras led by Neil Ardley, Michael Gibbs, Mike
Westbrook and many others and than gradually spread across Europe and even
behind the Iron Curtain, with such notable bandleaders as Gunter Hampel, Hans
Koller, Martial Solal, Gustav Brom and such distinguished ensembles as the NDR
Big Band, the Vienna Art Orchestra and so many others. Many of these European
Jazz orchestras often use similar characteristic devices to those used in the
process of making the music heard on this album: switching between melodic
mainstream Big Band parts and freely improvised passages, using string
arrangements and wordless human vocalese, in short the typical palette of contemporary
European Jazz orchestral music.
Considering Kołodziejczyk's
age, limited experience, restricted resources and all the obstacles that he had
to confront in order to record this album, one must admit that this is a
remarkable achievement, not only from the aesthetic perspective but also from
the pure organizational one. But of course most listeners are not really
interested in the behind the scenes of music making and judge it by what they
hear. As far as the music is concerned, Kołodziejczyk presents a collection of
sonic plateaus, which intertwine and develop slowly, and are best listened to
in the sequence dictated by the album's tracks and as a whole. The separate
parts of the suite do not really stand on their own, as the melodic content of
the entire proceedings is relatively limited. To use a metaphor from a
different media, the suite makes sense the same way a complete canvas of a
painting makes sense, and wouldn't do so if looked at when sliced into several
pieces.
At times one might get the
impression that this music is more about "how" than about
"what". Kołodziejczyk is obviously enamored with the bag of tricks
that are at his disposal as a composer orchestrator, and with the sound of
the orchestra, much more than with the actual compositions, and as a result we
get a complex baroque musical structure, supported by quite simple foundations.
Sometimes the instinctive urge to show as much of one's talents as possible,
here and now, can prove hazardous. This often happens to young and talented
artists and is quite meaningless in a long range, provided that Kolodziejczyk
is treating this project as just one of many lessons he has to go through
during his long and hopefully very successful career.
All in all this is a very
impressive, ambitious and unusual debut album by an obviously talented musician/composer, who presents enormous potential, which hopefully will be fully
realized in his future projects. Since orchestral Jazz albums are extremely
rare, this is even more of a valuable contribution to the Polish Jazz scene.
Thanks to For Tune for finally releasing this album, over three years after it
was recorded, it's certainly better off now in the open for all music lovers to
enjoy. I am anxiously waiting for the next project.
