Jazz Band Ball Orchestra - Ziporyn/Zimpel/Zemler/Riley - 100nka at 14th Krakow Silent Movie Festival (Kino Pod Baranami 5-8.12)

"The Dream Factory" - a nickname for the Hollywoodland and the motto for this year's edition of Silent Movie Festival in Krakow captures well the festival's spirit. 

The term "silent movie" might be considered bit misguided - the cinema never liked silence, the music was always there, long before the world understood how to capture the audio on the magnetic tape. And music was there to enhance, to translate, to follow or push the story. 

The beauty of the silent movie phenomen is that they can have a new life through music. They can adapt to modern times and acquire new meanings or rather new means of expression. As the Hollywood's latest trend is to re-make and re-heat plenty of old movies, however there's no need and no way to re-do Charlie Chaplin's movie. But you can always change the musical context and create a new and unique experience.

I chose three festival screenings, and, in hindsight, I wished I had seen the entire program.

I recall listening to Jazz Band Ball Orchestra's LPs as a teenager, and their true-to-the-tradition renditions of jazz classics were fun and pleasure to listen to. The JBBO was assembled over half a century ago by Jan Kudyk who's still in charge.

The orchestra played to "Mania : A history of a cigarette factory worker" featuring Pola Negri, a story not unlike the one presented much more recently in the cinema by Buz Luhrmann in "Moulin Rouge" and are many more examples to enlist. A young and beatifull factory worker Mania, played by Negri, falls madly in love with a talented composer, but is also courted by the factory's owner, who happens to be the opera's main sponsor, and as such holds the key to the composer's future. It's a story of romance, devotion and betrayal.

Jazz Band Ball's music fit perfectly the ballroom scenes, filled with dances and the discreet charm of burgeiosie. Jazz Band Ball Orchestra might sound like a true Second Line, in fact they joyfully travelled from Dixieland to swing and (for the dramatic finale) sharp post-bop chords.

Silent Film Festival in Kino Pod Baranami - The Dream Factory (5-8.11)

Silent Movie Festival is an unique event, it shows classic, or not to much, titles of the era when movies were literally moving pictures. No audio doesn't mean no music though - such would bond with the cinema from the very beginning. 

During the four days of the festival 14th edition Krakow's audience will have a chance to see movies a variety of movies (some of the feature themes are - Paola Negri's career, "Sleeping Beaty" - a classic pre-Disney rendition of the tale from 1916 as well as last as the 2012 version, retro-erotica or a classic "Cameraman" by the one and only Buster Keaton). 

Such pictures will be completed by live music, plenty of which should interest the lovers of alternative, indie, jazz and improvisation (100nka, Trifonidis Roots Trio, dj Lenar, Waclaw Zimpel and Jazz Band Ball Orchestra are among the artists to appear).

Please check the festival's schedule at cinema's website for the complete schedule. 

I'll report back to you on some of the screenings. 

SzaZa plays Sarewicz at 13th Silent Movie Festival (6-9.12)

13th edition of Silent Movie Festival brought back Krakow's audience back in time to the black & white times of revolution, passion and prohibition. The times where the story to be told didn't need colour or voice. But let us not forget the fact that music was present since the very beginning. The movies were accompanied by live music,  played by musicians representing a vast variety of modern genres including experimental electronica, post-rock, improvisation as well as traditional solo piano recital. 

This way the art is revitalized and re-inserted into a modern context, and the artistic results, about which shortly below, prove it to be as vital and valid as ever.

I could not follow the entire festival's schedule but I'd like to mention two brilliant duo performances. Here's the first one:

The SzaZa duo (Patryk Szamburski and Patryk Zakrocki) played music for Wladyslaw Sarewicz. If you have never heard before the name, make sure to look it up. Wladyslaw Szarewicz's movies are the very first animations ever filmed, introducing the frame-by-frame method and insects (!) as the story's heroes (a movie about ants and beetles in 1912? beat that, Pixar!). The duo's main instruments are clarinet and violin but those were assorted by entire bag of pipes, ocarinas, marimbas, mout-harmonicas, nose-flues, loops, filters etc to create music that brilliantly completed and commented the picture - the evil beetle would sound slightly like a Darth Vader, the heroic lilly's melody would be joyfull and light as the sunshine, the Santa would laugh jovially, the grasshopers would play bass and fiddle swinging brightly. 

One of the most brilliantly entertaining musical performances of the year I've heard, musicians enjoing themselves and the audience equally. Pictoresque, hillarious, cartoonish, positively crazy and seemingly (deceivengly) simple though in fact carefully woven and layered together.

Enjoy the duo's poetic music as well as one of the short films screened that evening - the "Revenge of the Camera Man".

"SzaZa play Starewicz"
Pawel Szamburski (clarinet) & Pawel Zakrocki (violin) and whistles, toys, electronics and objects
Wladyslaw Sarewicz - short movies

Kino Pod Baranami. 13th Silent Movie Festival. Krakow. 08.12.2012

Ken Vandermark Predella Group - Strade d'Acqua / Roads of Water [Multikulti]

Jeb Bishop - trombone
Jaimie Branch - trumpet
Tim Daisy - percussion
Fred Lonberg-Holm - cello
Nate McBride - bass
Jeff Parker - guitar
Ken Vandermark - reeds

Multikulti 2011

This is a first soundtrack in vast discography of Ken Vandermark and it's something special.

Enough to look at the names to see that Ken chose a stellar group, all players that he knows profoundly having a lot of experience playing together previously (one exception to that rule is Jaimie Branch - I don't know about any other Ken's project including him). 

This is a collection of compositions that support the video, but the music tells the story as well as the picture itself. These are mostly slow-tempo pieces, very melodic, somehow pensive. The film tells the story of people and places that are pure and simple. And while there are no easy cliche' etno clues in there (although the wonderful sound of marimba in "Sieve of the Soul" and percussion beats by Tim Daisy throughout have this 'world' music charm) the feeling of naturality pervades throughout the album, music is somehow relaxed, never forced, without any sense of urgence, going slowly with the stream of river, even during the more dramatic, more abstract, darker passages. 

All musicians are given a lot of space to shine. "Blue Over Green" with light funk etno-groove features extended guitar solo by Parker in two versions - gently and jazzy one in the first half, rocking in the latter. My favourite moment could be when Jaimie Branch enters with light trumpet solo after the introducing theme of "Austral Cartography". In fact Ken hardly takes any solo space until the explosive (in a Powerhouse way) end of "Dust Town" which is only the fourth track of the album (out of total seven). Yet it's absolutely clear it's his album, the way he leads the band, the ways the heads are composed (wonderfully arranged themes, the brass octave unisono in the middle of "Sieve of the Soul" is something of otherwordly beauty, the doubled cello and bass lines are something already known from recent Vandermark 5 albums).

Since it's possible to watch the movie on-line and thus listen to most of the music from this album I can only recommend that you get to know these sounds and pictures personally. An experience which I hope will be
as gratifying as it was in my case.

two tracks from the album are available in the radio playlist played on 02.20.2012
watch the movie here

Zimpel/Tokar/Kugel/Kusiolek ; Contemporary Noise Quintet - Silent Movie Festival 04.12

Had a chance to see a couple of movies during 12th edition of Silent Movie Festival in Krakow, a real treat. To see something as old fashioned as a silent movie with music so modern played live in the background is a quite unreal and special experience each time.

First at Kino Pod Baranami we watched Storm over Asia (1929) (this blog is not dedicated to cinema, so no real details here, check the links to imdb). Anyway the storyline is quite dramatic, with a couple of dynamic twists and great pictures presented (steppes of Mongolia are quite daunting). The music played by quartet is likewise dramatic, slowly building tension, fortunately not giving in into any easy world music suggestions given by the moving picture, but very much following the eerie and tense mood of the story, lot of sounds hanging in the air, great gong playing, lot of bows on plates and generally very delicate and suggestive playing by Klaus Kugel. Robert Kusiolek on accordion, who was completely unknown to me so far, creates some great, dark lines and the sound of the instrument contributes well to the climate of the movie. Mark Tokar and Waclaw Zimpel are in their usual fine form too. The music is quite cohesive, and, although sounds completely improvised, very structured, obviously thanks to very specific inspiration, with no real soloing going on, rather some moods flowing in and out, finding the balance between timbre and sound, and some long-forgotten, distant melodies, underlining the picture, enhancing it. Never mirroring the picture but following it very closely, and giving it more emotional strength (Some of the pieces from Zimpel's The Light trio 'Affects' release could be a good example of what I mean).

Then the audience moves to Manghha (in a festival bus) for Contemporary Noise Sextet (downsized to Quintet this evening) to see Piccadily (also 1929). This one could be very much considered pioneer noir move, with lot of seduction, dark passion and jealousy going on on the screen, also very modern. Again the band could choose the easy way and try to emulate the music of the era (lot of dancing on the screen, "Piccadily" is the name of the music club in London), but they choose to rather work on the mood and tension created by the stroyline. With some dense, rhythmically disturbed, only apparently smooth, grooves (great playing by Kuba Kapsa on drums, lot of drum'n'bass like fast brakes). Even the more laid back tunes have some dark tones to them and the whole time music kind of prophets the dramatic finale of the movie, pushing it forward, changing the perception of the scene sometimes, giving it more tense edge. While the playing itself was surely not entirely my cup of tea, it fit the movie very well, with a great downtown line opening and closing the spectacle, a portrait of big city - London, the city that never sleeps. As all of the big cities in this world.

This was extremely busy weekend (check the previous and the next post to verify) but Silent Movie Festival is something quite unique, bringing together art of the past and the present in a way that creates a very surreal experience. The music obviously shouldn't be judged by the usual standards, both bands playing servant role to the picture, both finding a very own way to comment on the picture and succeding in doing so. Whenever You have an opportunity to see this kind of event, take it, or wait for the next year in Krakow.