20. Jazztopad 2023
20. Jazztopad 2023
Wrocław, Poland
November 23-27
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Creating a sympathetic median between formal concerts featuring mostly top international players at the Natural Forum of Music (NFM)’s concert halls, and off-site spontaneous sessions mixing foreign and Polish musicians, Wrocław’s Jazztopad festival celebrated its 20th anniversary in an arresting fashion in 2023. In truth the improvised club and house concerts offered as much – and sometimes more – profound sounds as the more formal ones.
Still, one of NFM’s highpoints during Jazztopad’s second week of shows in late November was not only an intense first-set recital by American pianist Craig Taborn, but also the premiere of Luminous Grid, which he composed to be played by himself and the internationally celebrated local Lutosławski Quartet. With it, New York-based Taborn integrated a written score, improvisation from all five players and a synthesis of piano preparations and electronics. Without the last two additions, the improv/standard amalgamation was also present in his solo playing.
On his own Taborn tackled all parts of the piano, with textures encompassing low-pitched harsh rumbles, sound board echoes and linear squirms. He repeated certain patterns throughout, distinctively jerking his arm backwards after completing a phrase as if to extend the realized textures further. Another strategy was to toughen and thicken key motifs each time they appeared so that they were more prominent, although played at the same tempo during each pass.
Frequent tropes involved him seemingly examining single notes and tones to further extract every tonal color. Still, he didn’t let technique get in the way of linear projections. Never missing a chance to torque the expositions with dynamic cross-pulsations, and using firsts or elbows if necessary to attain needed emphasis, Taborn also came up with keyboard reprises that suggested the melody of half-remembered 1920s or 1930s songbook ballads.
Emphasis shifted during the concert’s second half as Taborn supplemented his acoustic keyboard with various electronic gizmos, and was joined on stage by members of the Lutosławski Quartet: violinists Roksana Kwaśnikowska and Marcin Markowicz, violist Artur Rozmysłowicz and cellist Maciej Młodawski. Unlike much conventional string quartet writing, Taborn’s composition seemed to assign a large role to cello sonorities, with Młodawski’s pizzicato run sometimes providing a distinct continuum. At the same time, arco bow scratches from the cello were set up to contrast with the other string players’ romantic harmonies. However, the cellist was an outlier only infrequently, as sequences of the composition also called for all five player to unite for theme prolongation.
The constant challenge for all was to add a distinctive individual stamp to the composition which at points included slow moving sound-shading, recurrent motifs and sudden percussive asides, as well as dreamy suggestions usually convened by string glissandi or piano arpeggios. Electronic oscillations were definite parts of the program, spicing up more restrained passages. While at points the processing fragmented to atom-sized timbres alongside spiccato pacing from the strings, there were other interludes where the wave-form replication was so exact that it wasn’t clear whether certain passages were live or synthesized. Overall this was a realized experiment, which not only presented a unique variation of Taborn’s skills, but also confirmed that the Lutosławski Quartet could cannily adapt to novel situations.
When it came to keyboard identification there was no questioning the acoustic undertakings of Polish pianist Marta Warelis in an intense duo with American drummer Frank Rosaly that took place in the somewhat less formal surroundings of the NFM’s Red Hall the previous evening.
With piano and drum set positioned in the centre of the auditorium floor, and audience members surrounding them seated on beanbags and folding chairs, the players, who are both now Amsterdam residents, expressed numerous improvisational strategies from the bellicose to the balladic with in-the-moment communication. Cognizant of creating interactive expositions and responses, space was also made for individual interludes.
While Warelis’ keyboard motions could sound out delicate melodies or emphasize single notes, she was also quick to change course, banging on the keyboard, sourcing soundboard stops, or threading even thinner wires among the instrument’s internal strings for vibrations and timbral fluctuations.
No conventional time-keeper, Rosaly maintained a horizontal rhythm when needed, but also left creation of rugged, pedal-point ostinatos to the pianist, as he explored various parts of his kit. Pops and ruffs landed where they should, propelled by sticks or mallets; rhythm colors came from more restrained brush work.
Rosaly shook small bells, rasped a chain on drum tops, scraped those tops with the edges of detached cymbals, squeaked unattached cymbals, and waved brushes and hacky sacks to create distinctive air currents. He also soloed using only the palms of his hand, slaps on his pants legs as well as drum tops.
Ensuring that each duo partner projected light and darkness, loudness and quiet, the two always circled singular improvisations back into connective forms.
Not all NFM shows took place in its concert halls either. An unexpectedly high quality focal point took place late Saturday afternoon on the institution’s multi-level foyer. With the audience seated on the marble stairs or folding chairs, a program from five young international musicians, playing together for the first time was Jazztopad’s annual Melting Pot|Made in Poland initiative. The quintet consisted of Iranian clarinetist Mona Matbou Riahi, Argentinian tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia, Norwegian violinist Tuva Halse, Dutch electric bassist Louise van den Heuvel and Polish drummer Hubert Zemler.
At first the contrast between clip-clop drumming and folksy fiddling was obvious, but the quintet soon settled into an interactive groove, mostly procured from an unvarying electric bass pulse and drum backbeat. With the fiddler’s Arcadian swipes heading one way, often to slurring glissandi, and the bass and drums approximating Rock music rhythms, it was the reed players who most frequently integrated Free Music tropes within the ongoing performance.
When not advancing in double counterpoint with Nebbia, Riahi’s clarion peeps soared over the group’s exposition, while Nebbia’s tongue stops and bites were harmonized with the clarinetist’s inner mouthpiece vocalization. Together they drew Halse into a more pressured exposition as she completed the interaction by adding pizzicato plucks.
Nebbia, Rosaly and Warelis were prominent among the non-locals who participated in another Jazztopad innovation: the house concerts that took place Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the homes of local music fans. Another constant presence was American guitarist Ava Mendoza, who also played a well-attended solo set Saturday evening at the funky, basement Mleczarnia Club & Café, which was also the site of nightly jam sessions.
It was hosted by the specially organized Sundogs band, all of whom were a constant presence at the house concerts.
Projecting an intriguing blend of singer-songwriter, improv and Rock influences, Mendoza often contradicted her simple lyrics with robust blues-like riffs that rocked out with judicious use of the whammy bar and ascending slides from drones to multi-string echoes. Making full use of her seven-pedal setup, the guitarist advanced both an accompanying bass string chord progression and reflective narratives that encompassed finger-picking emphasis, squealing high notes and corrosive fuzz tones. Commanding in performance, at no time did the lack of other musicians suggest any gaps in the presentation.
Mendoza also plays well with others, an attribute she exhibited during the house concerts at different locations in various areas of Wrocław. During the first meeting, her associates were tenor saxophonist Nebbia, pianist Warelis, local bassists Mikołaj Nowicki and Zbigniew Kozera, plus clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Mateusz Rybicki and Australian drummer Sam Hall, who had come from Berlin to the festival as part of the Sundogs house band at the Mleczarnia.
Working up from the piano runs, the guitarist’s positioned clips and foundation thumps from the bassists, the tempo gradually sped up as Nebbia tongue-slapped and splattered textures while Rybicki aimed for clarinet twitters. With one bassist playing arco and the other pizzicato, it was Mendoza’s constant knob-twisting strums that helped maintain linear extensions. Rybicki’s strategy encompassed hard bitten squeaks and Nebbia’s blasting playfulness that involved soloing with a tin can or a water bottle inserted in her horn’s bell.
As discordant motifs hardened into stacked harmonies, escalating guitar licks, stopped keys from the pianist and saxophone tongue stops maintained the improvisation’s exploratory essence. Slinky clarinet flutters, keyboard-spanking and bass string buzzes maintained this duality during the second set.
With Warelis sitting out and local violinist Julia Stein sitting in, the other players convened Sunday for the second house concert. Despite the line-up, it didn’t initially make the sound more string-oriented, but with Nebbia and Rybicki both playing tenor sax the blowing was more intense. Contributing to the energy were Hall’s ruffs and paradiddles, hearty dual double bass slaps, and discordant riffs and Rock-like flanges from the guitarist.
Climatic integration occurred by the end, but not before the violinist and bassists approximated a string trio, although shifts towards formalism were clearly undermined by sax honks, Rybicki’s clarinet slurs and ringing guitar chords.
Two subsequent improvisations maintained this high quality, with the locals seemingly emboldened enough to showcase more extended techniques. There were more string squawks and clenched glissandi from Stein, thicker arco scratches and pizzicato reverb from Nowicki and Kozera, while Hall smacked a small metal bowl on top of his snare for added timbres and ran a violin bow along his cymbals. Nebbia responded with rugged snarls from her horn despite having a rubber mute placed in its bell. Meanwhile Rybicki produced airy flutters and Mendoza, metallic string rubs.
The Saturday house concerts seemed more formally constituted than those on the next day, except for an ad hoc percussion duet between Rosaly and Hall at the end of the day’s second house concert.
With stripped down kits placed side by side on a living room floor, each drummer expanded auxiliary rhythms when Rosaly attached maracas to his shoes, and Hall placed small bells and a mini hanging cymbal onto his kit. The result was a collection of protracted rim shots, small instrument jiggles and positioned paradiddles that finally reached a cumulative connection. Cornetist Artur Majewski, bassist Nowicki and baritone saxophonist Matylda Gerber joined to amplify the final choruses.
The local trio of clarinetist Maksymilian Gwinciński, saxophonist Gerber and drummer Michał Szczepaniec had earlier worked out a distinctive version of chamber-improv to begin the concerts. Among the repeated riffs backed by near-silent percussion was a group strategy that matched low-pitched saxophone slurps with spiraling clarion-register clarinet tones that created broken octave coordination even as the tempo soared.
After that, playing with a another group, Warelis demonstrated that she could extract similar timbres from the host’s hallway-positioned upright piano that she also extracted from a grand piano. She even got down on the floor to stroke textural variations from the piano’s vertical inner strings. Crowded into a small space just below the home’s staircase, her improvisations were seconded by inventions from guitarist Filip Zakrzewski, Rybicki on tenor saxophone, bassist Nowicki and Michał Wdowiskowski playing only a snare drum.
Even in cramped quarters, the musicians constructed an incisively defined program with Rybicki’s almost-human cries riffing alongside isolated and idiosyncratic guitar jabs created with focused plinks or string hammering; bowed sweeps or thumping double bass lines; and surprisingly , energetic drum shakes using only brushes. Meanwhile the pianist moved from understated comping to note clusters to resplendent patterning to meet the others’ contributions.
House concerts produce excellent music for small audiences, yet part of Jazztopad’s appeal is the presentation of internationally recognized Jazz figures in large concert hall settings. Chief among them was American tenor saxophonist/flutist Charles Lloyd. Marking his 85th birthday during the festival’s final concert in the NFM’s main hall, Lloyd, a long-time friend of the festival, played not only with his touring trio of pianist Gerald Clayton and guitarist Marvin Sewell, but also with special guest, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro.
The evening before, Bro, Norwegian trumpeter/vocalist Arve Henriksen and Danish-American percussionist Marilyn Mazur presented their version of creative music in a reconfiguration of that same hall. There were individual strong points as when Mazur ambled busily through her collection of large and small stationary or hanging idiophones or moved to centre stage for an echoing beat created by striking an earthenware pot. Or the times the trumpeter reprogrammed his electronically enhanced brass squirts to slide into mellow, almost Mariachi-like swing trills or emotional mewls. For his part, the guitarist turned his mixture of ProgRock flanges, folksy strums and airy improv into notable melody statements. However at points wave forms from Bro’s and Henriksen’s electronics pushed the simple themes into soundtrack territory. Furthermore, the trumpeter’s processed vocalizing seemed to exist in a different sphere than the rest of the music.
There was similar lack of cohesion among the members of Lloyd’s quartet the next night. At points the four reached melodic connection and almost settled into a groove. But just as a major theme seemed to be developing, each pulled away and returned to individual note-forming. Often that playing was at a particular high quality, but interrelation appeared lacking.
Despite his age, Lloyd has lost none of the smooth tone or expansive voicing he has always exhibited. During the concert he was able to seamlessly emphasize perfect note placement, segue into strained split tons and asides while displaying the proper amount of sentimentality tinged with strength. This was particularly true when he played a lyrical passages that could be mistaken for “Danny Boy”.
Both Clayton and Sewell kept the program moving with carefully thought-out comping and timbral interjections. Both also showed an affinity for the Blues in their solos, with Sewell in particular expressing a series of bottleneck frails and primitivist vibrations that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1930s Blind Willie McTell 78 record. As for Bro though, his position on the far side of the stage somehow reflected his role. He was with, but not quite in, the group. Sometimes he and Sewell began expressive call-and-response duets before suddenly cutting them off. Overall though his guitar mixture appeared to exist away from the trio with, oddly enough, a hint of C&W chording added to his usual folk/rock/improv mixture.
These impressions outline just some of the notable sounds that took place during the second week of Jazztopad’s 20th anniversary festival. As the festival organizes programs showcasing international artists as well as having Polish musicians interact with out of town stylists, it’s clear Jazztopad will maintain its reputation for innovation in the years to come.
For more photos from Club Mleczarnia and the Jazztopad house concerts, please check Jazzword.com‘s Artist pages, which are now being updated.