Jazztopad 2024
21. Jazztopad
21-24 November 2024, Wrocław, Poland
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
Always innovative, Wrocław’s Jazztopad Festival moved into its full adulthood at year 21 in late November with more emphasis than ever on collaborations among Polish and foreign musicians and genre mixtures. Two of the most notable concerts, which took place on different evenings in the ornate National Forum of Music (NFM)’s reverse stage, involved the premiere of a Canadian-Polish exercise in chamber-improv and a day later, a blend of a Warsaw saxophonist’s improvisations with unique Carnatic music variations from a South Indian ensemble.
Calgary-raised pianist Kris Davis, who now lives in New York, premiered her specially commissioned The Solastalgia Suite on Friday evening with members of the local Lutosławski Quartet of violinists Roksana Kwaśnikowska and Marcin Markowicz, violist Artur Rozmysłowicz and cellist Maciej Młodawski.
About 24 hours later on the same stage, Pole Wacław Zimpel used his alto clarinet, soprano saxophone and electronics to join with Bengaluru-based Carnatic veterans Giridhar Udupa playing ghatam and vocalizing, Bharghava Halambi on kanjira, K Raja on thavil, and violinist Mysore N. Karthik. Together as Saagara, the five presented an enthusiastically received concert.
The Polish-Indian ensemble was a constant presence at the weekend house concerts – a unique feature of Jazztopad – which also included local and visiting players. Davis was a sometime presence at the festival’s late night jam sessions in the nearby Mleczarnia Club & Café, plus she spent the first part of her Friday two-set concert delineating a two-piano interaction with Australian Paul Grabowsky.
Utilizing the Lutosławski Quartet’s sophisticated command of pitch and tempo, prestissimo strokes were featured throughout The Solastalgia Suite as singular pizzicato stops from the lower-pitched strings intersected with arco slices from the higher-pitched ones. Harmonizing and scattering timbres, the four cannily moved the stressed accents from one player to another, while at times Davis’ thick chording touched on formal classicism.
Although the performance’s rhythmic essence was often torqued by spiccato slices or col legno taps from the strings, a strand of innate lyricism was also stressed. This tonal ambiguity suggested the suite could be termed romantic minimalism with a subtle turn towards swing. Super-fast and cascading timbral protuberances, especially from the violinists, added to the exuberant elation with which the suite was performed, leading to an un-selfconscious encore demand from the audience.
Except for a lively and unexpected interpretation of Sun Ra’s “Love in Outer Space” which concluded the set, a certain ennui could be sensed during the Davis-Grabowsky set. Alternating between playing tunes composed by both musicians, the intricate tone whorls bordering on Blues and R&B were more likely to come from the Australian’s keyboard than Davis’.
While equally proficient expressing expositions prestissimo or stop-time, when they weren’t playing in unison Davis’ output relies on thickened chording, while Grabowsky’s was more explicitly syncopated. Among episodes of speedy chases or call-and-response situations, the sometimes foot-tapping performance included enough familiar asides and allusions to standards that a game of “name that tune” could have been appropriate.
Sounds that were non-standard, at least outside the Indian subcontinent, were created by Saagara the following evening. This originality was emphasized since this East-meets-West performance had its drone created by Zimpel’s use of harmonium-mimicking electronic processing, while the tunes’ melodic qualities were usually projected by the taut but extended slides from Karthik’s violin. Meanwhile the remaining Saagara members – all seated cross-legged in a group on the stage – provided the flowing, undulating beats.
Extra impetus was added to the fluid stop-start melodies with the rhythmic vocalizing of ghatam-smacking Udupa; Halambi’s intense pounding with tapered thumb caps on his right hand fingers while striking with a short stick on either head of a vertically held thavil drum; and when Raja intensified his kanjira percussion thwacks with jew’s harp twangs or finger-cymbal jangles, often in tandem with Udupa’s equivalent finger-cymbal tinkles.
Managing to refer to Western improvised music and traditional Carnatic timbres, Zimpel’s reed tones were logically inserted into the slithering, thumping tunes. When blowing hard, pure notes from his alto clarinet added Eastern-European melancholy to some motifs. On the other hand, his soprano saxophone flutters and tongue stops provided unusual accents to the sequences as they rippled in tempo and pitch. This mixture of textures that were chant-like and creative in equal measure offered an outstanding take on cross-continental dialogue, and led to repeated demands for encores from the audience.
As a group, Saagara members were a major presence during two of Jazztopad’s four daytime weekend house concerts, where their percussion expertise augmented the rhythmic impetus of other players in the assembled jam sessions. Plus, the freer surroundings encouraged out-of-the-ordinary collaborations and improvisations, especially from Udupa, Zimpel and Karthik.
In intimate home surroundings the ghatam player could vary his drum beats, while his hand-clapping and chanting built up excitement so that Udupa seemed to come across as a combination square dance caller and rapper.
Meanwhile Zimpel used both saxophone and clarinet to zigzag from subtle swing to slippery Carnatic emphasis depending on whether he was reacting to the sounds of his Saagara associates or the mostly Jazz-improv output of local players. Two who projected more western textures were Slovenian alto saxophonist Luka Zabric and Wrocław trumpeter Kuba Kurek.
During another set, a drift towards Free Jazz was emphasized as Canadian basset clarinetist François Houle traded ideas with Wrocław violinist Julia Stein, bassist Zbigniew Kozera and Australian drummer Sam Hall. As part of that stripped-down set, spiccato fiddle slices were matched with drum clatters and positioned bass string thumps as the four worked up to prestissimo interaction.
At the same time, the ripened timbres of Houle’s elongated clarinet cut through the arco timbres from both string players while simultaneously adding a homogenized sheen that solidified the disparate elements.
In contrast to what took place during a house concert the previous day, Houle’s reed puffs were part of a distinctive jam that added Eastern-directed plucks from fellow British Columbian Gordon Grdina’s oud. However, the patterns exposed that day by the two, alongside Hall’s chugging beats and the doubled trumpet shakes and grace notes from Kurek and Scot Alister Payne, were expressed in more finished form during the club concert the Grdina and Houle duo gave Friday night.
Additionally, Payne’s distinct advanced techniques were more explicitly on show Thursday evening when he and Korean percussionist Sun-Mi Hong gave a concert at Mleczarnia.
The house concerts offered still more intriguing contrasts, as when local violinist Julia Stein and Saagara’s Karthik played side by side. That’s because her free playing underscored Stein’s European approach, while his free playing was rooted in Carnatic rhythms.
Further string variances came forward during these intimate settings, as when Polish violinist Lucy Brown stretched glissandi and torqued spiccato lines during her ensemble contributions, and while American violist Mat Maneri, who was featured in a meditative NFM show with French bassist Sarah Murcia Thursday evening, brought a similar sangfroid to his house concert playing. Instructively, Brown’s sweeter fiddle breaks were a contradictory foil to the frequent sour blasts from the many reed participants during the house concerts.
Following that thread, two other woodwind players who made impressions during the house concerts were Wrocław’s multi-reedist Mateusz Rybisk, who led the late-night jam sessions at the Mleczarnia club, and Slovenian alto saxophonist Zabric, whose Baltic Gatherers quartet disseminated updated FreeBop at the same club Thursday night.
Moving among moderated mid-range clarinet tones, bass clarinet smears and tenor saxophone emphasis, Rybisk’s playing was mature enough to append the appropriate timbre to each situation.
A more mercurial soloist, Zabric’s doits, jagged smears and irregular tonguing were heightened when he jammed plastic or paper drinking cups into his horn’s bell and created a distinctively uncommon output, whether to encourage bandmates — pocket trumpeter Nikola Vuković, bassist Ivar Roban Križić and drummer Luís Oliveira — at the club or cutting through multiple horn and string expositions during the house concerts. With sounds reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, invention still affirmed the Baltic Gatherers’ mordant modernization.
One reason was that Vuković inserted additional miniature trumpet bells among his valves and tubing to amplify his sound. Trumpet fanfares mixed with acrid reed bites were further sharpened with ratcheting strokes from Križić and Oliveira’s rugged thumps. Many of the tunes were extended to the point that they seemed ready to fragment, but were caught just before they splintered. No matter how outside their playing became though, harmonic energy in the form of drum ruffs, aviary riffs and repetition of the heads eventually glued the pieces together.
Associates for a couple of decades, Houle and Grdina exhibited similar risk-taking and restraint at the Mleczarnia on the festival’s penultimate night. Creating unison chamber improvising, the guitarist’s clean finger-picking and slides fastened onto the clarinetist’s slivery elaborations and glowing trills, while Houle’s occasional reed whoops and squalls prevented any turn towards smooth sameness.
Nor was there any hint of obtuse exoticism in Grdina’s oud playing. He used the Middle Eastern lute somewhat like a 12-string guitar, giving his playing more tremolo peaks and basso valleys due to the extra strings. On Houle’s part, flutter-tonguing and vibrating slurs added to the mellow feel. At the same time, Grdina’s clawhammer strums and multi-string frails on guitar were as effective adding rough edges to the tandem evolution as Houle’s altissimo screams. The climax came when the two reached a rapprochement of stressed chording that was rocking as well as reflective.
Another notable duo was that of trumpeter Payne and percussionist Hong, both of whom now live in Amsterdam, and who were featured at the Mleczarnia just after Kris Davis’ concerts at the NFM. With the trumpeter creating ascending triplets and half-valve emphasis, and the drummer clip-clop patterning, just-in-time rhythmic emphases were often brought into play.
Eccentric hand-muted plunger slurs were used to stanch the flow of brass notes, just as a reliance on hi-hat pings and bass drum ruffs freed the duo from over-reliance on simple narratives. Dedicated to responsive patterning rather than solos, long-lined melodies peeked out among the hard drum smacks and valve-squeezed flutters. The concluding dual definition was confirmed as a brass screech was modified with a final press roll.
Jazztopad’s homage to the Jazz tradition was on full display during the festival’s final concert on the NFM’s reverse stage with a piano recital by 90-year-old South African Abdullah Ibrahim.
Playing nearly non-stop for more than an hour, the pianist’s keyboard progress emphasized single notes and bursting waterfalls of note patterns. At times tempos were metronomic; at others balladic with tinkling keys and smooth asides. Bedrock Blues chording was sometimes thick and rugged, and when the tempos soared, there were cross-handed boogie-woogie allusions.
As the syncopations ebbed and flowed, snatches of Ibrahim originals, and brief quotes from standards and show tunes arrived and were quickly dispatched. In fact the constant playing was sometimes as Baroque as it was Boppy. Foot-tapping in parts, the piano recital came to a halt with a sustained pedal-point note that gradually faded.
There was much more music available during this year’s Jazztopad, including an earlier series of concerts the previous week before a three-day hiatus. Now that it has attained the official age of majority, more can be expected — and will likely be realized musically — from the festival .
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