Blue Master Special / Svarte Records 1973
A post mostly revolving around Polish and Finnish Jazz. Hot Lotta finds the 2 heavies of German free jazz (Kowald and Brötzmann) with the 2 heavies of Finnish free jazz (Vesala and Aaltonen). This is one hard hitting album with much delicate textural work from Vesala and Kowald. A great contrast to the Brötzmann attack. I find Edward Vesala to be one of the most profound of the European Jazz composers/players, he seems quite underrated. Even in the ECM circle, one hardly hears his name. His albums are really quite Godly, especially Nan Madol, Satu and Lumi.
Krzysztof Komeda's most beautiful album, of which this series of posts is partially named after. This album features the great Zbigniew Namysłowski on alto, Günter Lenz on bass, Rune Carlsson (a Swede) on drums, and Tomasz Stańko on trumpet. For this listener; Astigmatic is one of the just perfect jazz albums, one that is endlessly played and endlessly thought about here at the art of memory. Albums seminal to the Polish jazz scene have a mixture of familiarity with a subtle strangeness, bordering on, but not quite surreal.
The band for Knife in the Water is Komeda on piano, Bernt Rosengren (a Swede) on saxophone, Leszek Dudziak (read on line this Pole currently lives in Sweden) on drums and Roman Dylag on bass.
Edward Vesala - Nan Madol ECM 1976
3 essential ECM releases - First we find possibly the best ECM release in the opinion of this listener, Vesala's Nan Madol with not only some of the most beautiful percussion work put to tape, but in addition melodies that are rich and quite queer in the Lovecraftian sense. The band features Vesala playing drums, percussion, harp, flutes, Juhani Aaltonen on saxophones, bells, flutes, voice, Sakari Kukko on flute, Seppo Paakkunainen on flute and soprano saxophone, Pentti Lahti on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet, the American Charlie Mariano on alto saxophone, flute, and nagaswaram, and Elisabeth Leistola on harp. One reads of influences ranging from Japanese folk melodies to Alpine herding calls. Quite a metaphysical album which hovers between complete abstraction and traditional jazz (with a touch of world music) and presents the listener with a subtle feeling not unlike the effects of a divine ambrosiac.
3 essential ECM releases - First we find possibly the best ECM release in the opinion of this listener, Vesala's Nan Madol with not only some of the most beautiful percussion work put to tape, but in addition melodies that are rich and quite queer in the Lovecraftian sense. The band features Vesala playing drums, percussion, harp, flutes, Juhani Aaltonen on saxophones, bells, flutes, voice, Sakari Kukko on flute, Seppo Paakkunainen on flute and soprano saxophone, Pentti Lahti on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet, the American Charlie Mariano on alto saxophone, flute, and nagaswaram, and Elisabeth Leistola on harp. One reads of influences ranging from Japanese folk melodies to Alpine herding calls. Quite a metaphysical album which hovers between complete abstraction and traditional jazz (with a touch of world music) and presents the listener with a subtle feeling not unlike the effects of a divine ambrosiac.
Second comes Satu with the magnificent Vesala on drums, the smooth Pole Tomasz Stańko on trumpet, Palle Mikkelborg on trumpet. On sax we have Juhani Aaltonen, the Norwegian Knut Riisnaes and the Pole Tomasz Szukalski. Also Rolf Malm on bass clarinet, Torbjørn Sunde on trombone, Palle Danielsson on double-bass, and the extremely lush and gritty guitarist Terje Rypdal getting Rypdalian with his Strat, overdrive, delay, wah wah, compression, and Marshall amp. Many of these tunes share the quality of an unfathomable melodic purity we find with Charles Mingus.
Edward Vesala - Lumi ECM 1987
Approaching a big band quality with some extraordinary players giving the recording a classic ECM sound, like Iro Haarla on harp. The last track Together is co-written with Tomasz Stańko, Raoul Björkenheim's guitar work here over Vesala's drums hovers in-between atonality and lush-infused noise and is bewilderingly beautiful.
Approaching a big band quality with some extraordinary players giving the recording a classic ECM sound, like Iro Haarla on harp. The last track Together is co-written with Tomasz Stańko, Raoul Björkenheim's guitar work here over Vesala's drums hovers in-between atonality and lush-infused noise and is bewilderingly beautiful.
Recently visited the WFMU record fair and the first booth I hit was that of a lawyer from Philadelphia who had a plethora of Polish jazz. Many of these came from his collection. On this Namysłowski recording we find a heavy in the Pole canon; Namysłowski's 1973 masterpiece featuring his work on alto saxophone, cello, and piano. Paweł Jarzębski is on bass, Kazimierz Jonkisz on drums, Tomasz Szukalski on tenor, and Stanisław Cieślak on trombone, and percussion. The first side has some almost witch-oriented female vocals, transforming the modal feel of the album into something approaching the surreal. The side ends like a Polish wedding spinning chaotically into the oblivion. With much of these Polish albums, it is hard not to think of the great write Bruno Schulz and the ambiance he creates with simplicity.
Smooth Polish melodies filtered through some 70s funk with Namysłowski on alto. One can surely hear a Komeda influence in Namysłowski's writing which is pleasantly augmented with some good steady groove bass from Paweł Jarzębski and Mileseque electric piano by Wojciech Karolak. Additionally we have Tomasz Szukalski on soprano and tenor and Czesław Bartkowski on drums.
The multi-instrumentalist Włodzimierz Nahorny plays piano and alto saxophone on his classic free jazz album from 1968 with Jacek Ostaszewski on bass and Sergiusz Perkowski on drums. Essential album for those interested in European jazz and late 60s jazz. Moments of near aural stacis shift into explosive bits of hard bop transitioning into free jazz throughout this album. Side two's Przy Kasie / At The Cashier pairs Nahorny's alto with bird twitters. Great stuff, any album with bird tweets is top of the shelf.
(two copies in collection, both covers above)
Smooth jazz from Mr. Muniak and his quintet. Muniak on tenor and soprano, Andrzej Dechnik on bass, Jerzy Bezucha on drums, Paweł Perliński on piano and electric piano (side two he gets pretty magical) and some guitar shredding by Marek Bliziński. Seing these guys in some smoke-filled club in Warsaw drunk on Wódka in
the 1970s must have been quite an experience.
Janusz Muniak and Zbigniew Seifert on sax, Bronisław Suchanek on bass and Janusz Stefański on drums. One of Stańko's best.
ECM release with Tomasz Szukalski on tenor and soprano saxophone, Dave Holland on bass, and Edward Vesala on drums. I believe named after Juliusz Słowacki's 1834 Romantic novel of the same name.
Another completely essential ECM release. Everything perfect: lush cover photograph by Jim Bengston with a no-gray-area high contrast black and white seascape, and design by Sascha Kleis. A fine example of that quintessential ECM sound here obtained by recording engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug and producer Manfred Eicher. A killer band with Stańko on trumpet, the Swede Bobo Stenson on piano, Palle Danielsson on bass. Jon Christensen on drums, Komeda alumni Bernt Rosengren on tenor sax, Joakim Milder on tenor and soprano, and the heavy shredder Terje Rypdal adding often times noisy guitar.
2 recent printings of Polanski/Komeda collaborations.
