Princely polish

It’s not every venue that can satisfy a performer when, at the sound check a few hours before the gig, he requests a Bösendorfer grand to replace the Yamaha. But this was the Band Room at the ANU School of Music, and the changeover and the associated tuning happened for the gig to go ahead on time. The fact that it was even requested is evidence of the style of the night. This is ECM Euro jazz, so honky tonk is out, as is thundering and abandoned playing. This is delicate, controlled and intelligent music, obviously influenced by the classical training and traditions that are common in European jazz players, although still clearly in the jazz idiom. Not third stream, but not torrid either.

I last heard this band when they appeared as the backing trio for Thomas Stanko a few years ago at a private embassy gig here in Canberra. This time, they were touring for Sydney and Perth Festivals, and presenting their individual piano trio voice. It’s formal and considered, and despite a few pop tunes, is in the mainstream of modern European playing. I think Keith Jarrett and to a lesser extent, Dave Holland, when I hear them, and they played tunes by Keith Jarrett, offsider Gary Peacock and Carla Bley. But they also played Prince and they’ve recorded Bjork’s Hyperballad, so partaking of a current theme of reinventing the standards repertoire with a new generation of popular tunes. I like all this. And I liked the band, very much. I wasn’t the only one.

Marcin Wasilewski was richly harmonic on piano, free to move through keys and dissonances, but disciplined and tempered in his approach to the keyboard and his fine little melodic lines. I noticed later in the night, as the volume lifted and there was a bit more abandon, that he was disappearing under the drums, so he’s presumably not a loud player. He’s more a player who feels every key. Not to say there were no dynamics (there were) but they were circumscribed. Slawomir Kurkiewicz played a Czech-Ease travel bass with those soft Velvet strings for good, solid modern syncopated lines and just one walk that I noted during the night. It was close rhythmic playing with the piano, with a few very good solos, but I particularly noticed the reliable intonation. Perhaps it’s evidence of more classical training. Michal Miskiewicz was using borrowed drums, and I found some of the tom tones to be a bit woolly, but he played with consistently changing rhythms and again a closeness with the others. To me, it was this closeness that was the highlight. Rhythms that moved through the players, in contrast or in sympathy, with that underlying syncopation from the bass. It wasn’t clearly swinging, although I guess there was some swing there, but more patterns of dotted notes and straight triplets and quavers that hinted of the classical charts I only attempt to sight read. Tunes and improvisations that display a Western classically-informed conception of how to place notes in time to form melody.

The stage presence was of a type with the seriousness of the music. Marcin just once spoke to the audience to list the tunes they’d played, and this was short and I missed most of it. He spoke English well enough (trust the Europeans to be so international) but this was a serious event we were offered. It led to a quiet and subdued night: more highbrow and perhaps less enjoyable than it could have been. But the crowd was good, the venue was intimate and quiet (and well provided), the music was accomplished, and ArtSound was there to record and later replay on some Friday Night Live. So this was a wonderful performance, if quiet and absorbed. A good sign for jazz in Canberra and worthy audience to keep us on the touring circuit.

The Marcin Wasilewski Trio comprised Marcin Wasilewski (piano), Slawomir Kurkiewicz (bass) and Michal Miskiewicz (drums).

A private visit

Tomasz Stanko returned to Canberra to perform for a large audience at the Playhouse last night. It was a great performance, and much enjoyed by those who managed to attend. But there’s a gloomier side to this story. There was an attempt to bring them here for a public performance, but it was skittled by lack of a reasonably low price venue for such a specialist art form. So the performance that the band made was a private one for invited guests of the Polish Embassy on one of their two national days. CJ gives great thanks to the Embassy for sponsoring the tour and the performance. It was a wonderful event. Sadly, I give thumbs down to our inability to host a public performance of such excellent players when they are available. It’s all the market these days, and here the market clearly failed. Let’s hope for appropriate available venues for future visitors. But now back to the concert.

I'd read that Tomasz Stanko was influenced by Ornette Coleman, so I was expecting a challenging free session. The first tune started tenderly, like horns heard over the Alps and soft mallet rolls, then on to a 6/8 time with a chromatic falling bass line, and a slow melodic overlay with a waterfall of piano notes. It continued as free: a complex of varying parts that could have been a medley, with snippets of melody and extended free playing. But the concert proceeded through various styles, with a standards-like chordal tune and a busy latin number, and finishing with an encore that my wife thought was film music, maybe the theme from the Godfather. I know that Tomasz has written film music; perhaps this was from one of his scores.

Overall, what I heard was a blissful melange of styles. I heard hints of Freddie Hubbard in the latin and lots of Miles in the freer, modal bits. There were some wonderfully complex interplays in trio and in quartet segments. I loved a busy bass playing free with a voluble trumpet and accompanying highlights from the drums. (I remember this interplay in early Chick Corea, and it was bliss to actually see it performed). Alternatively, the piano played impressionistic/expressionistic styles reminiscent of turn of the (20th-) century European fine music tradition: spots of exquisite beauty with the Steinway tinkling like waterfalls. The drums explored rather than set the rhythm with a muted, wooden tonality at a very controlled volume. All the players implied the beat, but perhaps the bass was the stalwart here, although he joyously bounced around the rhythm often enough. Over the top were frequent, extravagant flurries of long, sustained solo lines from Tomasz, often introduced by lucid, perhaps folkloric, melodies.

I constantly noticed Tomasz’s tone. There were visits to higher notes and fluency over the full range, but I most noticed the airy and humid tone in the lower registers which impressed me as distinctive. The sound was excellent all round. The recorded national anthems which preceded the concert suggested a very unbalanced (very bass heavy) PA EQ, but the concert itself sounded fine. I’ve mentioned the light, tinkling Steinway, and the wonderful drum tones, but the shortened travel bass (Dave Holland style) was also rich and full, and the overall tonal balance was very, very good. The Playhouse seems a competent venue for this music, at least from the front rows where I was sitting.

I’m always surprised when I hear these international experts. It was like this most recently with Dave Holland. You know what they are doing, and it’s the same as the capable locals and we everyday mortals are doing (sometimes using the same charts), but there’s a distinction of freedom, richness, complexity, fluency, aptness that makes them something apart. My other observation is obvious and common: this is European music and it’s different from American jazz. There’s a distinctly different, more cerebral, less hard style of jazz in Europe with connections to local folk and European fine music traditions. It was evident here as elsewhere. Interesting, and all part of the international art form which is living jazz.

In summary, this was a wonderful concert. I loved it, and even Megan enjoyed parts of it. So thanks again to the Polish Embassy and to the band. This was one for my jazz highlights history.