Some ramblings about the music I love, about the concerts in Krakow or elsewhere I get to witness, about cds I manage to get my hands on and particularly like. Stay tuned.
Jazz Alchemist
Raphael Roginski has appeared quite a few times on the blog already and the reason for this is quite simple, I believe he's one of the most original artists around, his guitar playing sound is completely unique and he's quite a multi-tasker leading a handful a different project. Named, with a reason, the animator of the revival of jewish music in Poland in recent years. A trend which treads its beginnings to the release of "Shofar" cd in 2007 - a trio with Mikolaj Trzaska and Macio Moretti playing together music that Roginski found in the archives of ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovsky. It so happens that, after quite a long hiatus, two of Roginski's bands released new music in 2013 so I decided to gather them together.
Cukunft (yiddish for "Future") is quite a band of madmen on stage (you most definitely need to see, whilte it's still on the web, their concert with Maria Raducanu that took place on Krakow Jewish Festival 2013) - it's punk-rock energy and crazy circus madness applied by two raving clarinets, guitar and drums.
The music on the cd was recorded almost exactly one year ago - at OFF Festival 2012 in Katowice. Mikolaj has been making music for theatre and movie for quite a while now (only the soundtrack for "Dark House" was officially released on a cd) yet "Trzaska plays (the music from) <Rose>" marks a turning-point in this part of his artistic activity.
It would be hard to immagine the modern polish scene without Raphael Roginski and the entire plethora of his projects, idealized to bring back jewish culture, modern and vital, to a country where it used to thrive and where it disappeared completely after the tragedy of World War II. Roginski's vision of jewish music is modern and rebellious and Cukunft is the perfect vehicle to make it a reality - powerfull, tribal drumming, poignant guitar tones and absolutely furious clarinets chasing one another - that's Cukunft, in short.
For the concert at the festival Cukunft (expanded to a quintet with Piotr Domagalski on bass) invited a Ramanian vocalist Maria Raducanu, to sing with them. We are children of the borderline, said Festival's director Janusz Makuch, introducing the performance. And that's where the meetings happen, and where cultures influence each other, and we all can appreciate our differences, and be surprised of how much in common we have.
Watching Edvard - Kilogram Records 2011
Zikaron Lefanai - Kilogram Records 2012
Ircha Clarinet Quartet is truly an unique band. I wholeheartedly reccomend their first cd "Larks Uprising" recorded with Joe McPhee, but it did not really represent the band's music as it really is. The Quartet share double musical interest, first of which is the ritual jewish music heritage, secondly each member of the group compose their own music for the quartet and those compositions, delicate, poetic, minimalistic share the qualities of modern music by the likes of Steve Reich or Philip Glass rather than jazz or klezmer.
The Quartet second and third release present together an honest picture of the group's musical vision as the first cd "Watching Edvard" showing their "modern composition" side and the latter one "Zikaron Lefanai" focusing on their interpretation of the jewish heritage. What remains intact through the two albums is the band's wonderfully unique collective sound and sense of unity.
Marcin Masecki's name resonates well in ears of any polish jazz/music fan but he's yet to gain international recognition and he most certainly deserves it. Masecki's talent, refined through years of classical education (graduated from Berklee College of Music) is undeniable. He's sound conception and style of playing is easily recognizable (he prefers, whenever it's possible, to play his own pianino instead of a grand concert piano, all in order to be able to create a personal rapport with his own instrument - something that comes more easily to musicians playing virtually any other instrument). The vast ground he covers with his activity is impressive - equally adept in mainstream jazz (with Zbigniew Wegehaupt Quratet), fully improvised concerts (solo, in duo with Ziv Ravitz, in power trio with Macio Moretti and Raphael Roginski), avant pop (Paristetris) or classical (fascinated with Bach's music). In any of those contexts Masecki remains unmistakenably Masecki, unique, idiosyncratic. Which brings us (well, sort of) to Profesjonalizm sextet, his latest release on Lado ABC (an alternative label he's been working with for quite a while now).
Imagine a foggy night at the sea, and the sound ships sirens emerging from the silence and the darkness, five of them, calling each other out, responding to voices coming from all the directions. Finding a freindly waters, where they can exchange some personal stories, with the listening choir commenting on those all the time. They reach an agreement and start singing together (absolutely stunning and oh so peacefull harmonies in the middle of the track) and then move back and forward between the solo narration, duos and the entire choir parts, with everyone finding a role to play and never looking for a front spot. That is how this albums starts on "Ant-hill Builder".
Cukunft is a polish group which, until yesterday, I had a pleasure of only hearing once, couple of years back, performing as a trio. Now they perform as a quartet led by Raphael Roginski on guitar, with Pawel Szpura on drums, Michal Gorczynski and Pawel Szamburski on clarinets (the first doubling on tenor, the latter on bass clarinet). The band's name means "future" in yidish and they are playing a mix of traditional jewish tunes and compositions by Raphael based on klezmer scale.
While the music is very traditional, the playing is definitely not, the band spicing the klezmer music with some rock tinges, punk attitude, free-jazz blowing improvisation and to simple put it a lot of madness. Hypnotic tunes are driven by powerful yet very imaginative drumming by Pawel Szpura. Great unisono lines by clarinets. Raphael is definitely one of the most original guitar players I've seen, capable of both lyrical understatement (preparing the strings with pieces of paper) and hard rock powerful chords or soloing, also some noise feedback playing. Two-clarinets frontline is very expressive and energetic, too bad it would sometimes get lost because of no amplification (especially the bass clarinet would suffer).
All music is getting frenzy, crazy and whole lotta fun. Shame there was no dancing floor. While I'm not really sure if there were any originals among the songs played that night, two citations included in two very groovy improvisations were great - riff lines from "Paint it, black" by Rolling Stones and "Break on through" by The Doors. Amazingly hypnotic and energetic.
The title of the Madman of the evening goes to Michal Gorczynski who plays sometimes jumping into the air, sometimes on his knees, dismantling the instruments and playing (like in 'having fun') with all the different parts of them (example: whistling into the bottom end of saxophone).
No point in writing anything more since You can heard some tracks on band's myspace page and their latest double-cd release comes easily recommended - recorded live is it is quite honest to the band's playing in front of the audience, when energy and passion, and fun come first before the perfect execution of material (although there are some lyrical and quite melancholic songs in the repertoire too).
Couple of things to say about the Bomba place - too bad the (quite tiny, but that's not the problem) stage is placed right next to the entrance. Since the concerts was free (which is definitely great in itself) this caused a presence of a lot of people casually walking in and out or chatting by the bar and disturbing the audience (filling all the space available) and getting really annoying sometimes (especially during the quiteter passages). Still it's nice to have new place where one can see some good concerts so I guess one shouldn't complain too much about it, at least for now.
