CDC Laval

TOMASZ STANKO

LITANIA PROJECT SALLIS BENNEY THEATRE BRIGHTON
VETERAN POLISH trumpeter Tomasz Stanko achieved world-wide acclaim in 1997 with the release on ECM records of the award-winning Litania. A re-exploration of the music of the Sixties Polish jazz composer Krystof Komeda, who also wrote the soundtracks to many of Roman Polanski’s earlier films, most memorably Rosemary’s Baby, Litania showcased the trumpeter at the height of his powers, threading together Komeda’s jazz and cinematic work.Stanko was Komeda’s closest musical collaborator until the composer’s death in 1968, and has long been an influential figure in European free jazz. His wider recognition as one of the most distinctive trumpet voices was long overdue, but it is significant that it came about through revisiting the music of his mentor. And so it was appropriate that, despite having just released the excellent From The Green Hill, Stanko chose to perform music from Litania as part of ECM’s 30th anniversary festival in Brighton, reuniting the same musicians from the recording (minus Terje Rypdal on guitar, and with Anders Kjellberg on drums standing in for the double- booked Jon Christensen).In hipster flared denim and a fisherman’s hat, Stanko looked as though he had just stepped out of a late-Sixties Greenwich Village, his dress sense betraying the other great influence on him: Ornette Coleman. East European melancholy meets exuberant American free jazz? Litania certainly embraces elements from both, and the first set was a marvellous integration of the free with the tonal. In a month that saw the death of Lester Bowie, it was refreshing to see the spirit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago alive at the Sallis Benney Theatre, especially on the momentous “Night-Time, Daytime Requiem”, dedicated to John Coltrane.

Like all the music on Litania, its composition is tightly controlled, yet the six musicians gave the impression of not really playing together. Bursting above it all was Stanko’s trumpet, a mix of the rasping and the melodic, at times screeching into what many would consider “unacceptable sound”.Indeed, the force and volume of his playing was a surprise.There also seemed a degree of tension on stage, although the rhythm section of the underrated Bobo Stenson on piano, and Palle Danielsson on double-bass, was excellent Perhaps the turbulent nature of the music demanded it. Or were they missing Jon Christensen? The second set dismissed any such thoughts. Stanko opened with just Stenson as accompaniment, and played the most exquisitely spare and searching harmonic solo. When the rest of the group joined them, they were visibly much more relaxed and performed an outstanding set which, although less free than the first, was all the more accomplished for it Stenson and Danielsson, in particular, delivered fine solos. A case of less is more, and true to Komeda’s tenet that Stanko has followed: “simplicity is vital”..

MARK ISHAM BARBICAN LONDON

JOE ZAWINUL, now 67, was one of the more cerebral progenitors of the jazz-rock theme, a furiously self-replicating style you can still hear in the most unlikely places. He was a talented Viennese refugee pianist/accordionist who made his home in American jazz and then rebuilt the house, prompting a fundamental change in the music. Zawinul supplied a certain flavour, a European introspective melancholy, to Miles Davis at a crucial point in the trumpeter’s career. The Austrian’s landmark composition In a Silent Way (1969) became the title track of Davis’s seminal album. Soon after, ex-Davis saxophonist, Wayne Shorter and Zawinul, formed Weather Report, which turned some of Davis’s restless studio explorations into a defined ensemble sound and approach summarised by a remark the bandleaders made: “We never solo, we always solo.” A jazz musician’s dream and a mixing engineer’s nightmare.
Nearly three decades on, the London Jazz Festival can happily programme this great originator alongside a devoted interpreter. Trumpeter Mark Isham’s Silent Way Project debt to Zawinul’s original creative spark is much more than nominal: he has cleverly copied the stylistic tropes and sounds of 1969-74 Miles, playing intense versions of tracks from albums such as On the Corner and In a Silent Way. Isham’s version of the Zawinul tune reprised the rubato melody over a slow jazz-funk groove that drifted nonchalantly into a stripped-down, barely recognisable Milestones, an earlier Davis composition.Zawinul made a similar historical reference near the end of his set: a tantalising fragment of the theme and chords of Duke Ellington’s Rockin in Rhythm surfaced briefly from a racing, full-tilt boogaloo.

Zawinul has plenty of great chords under his fingers, but there’s little space to let them through. The Zawinul Syndicate is relentless, a sonic hit squad armed to the gills with percussion, kit drums, guitar (Gary Poulson switching speedily from supple lead to chattering rhythm) and bass guitar playing fast and high. The band’s physical stamina is astonishing, and at 67 Zawinul, a stocky mustachioed figure in a skull cap, has twice the energy of a 40-year-old who has twice the energy of a teenager. He told us this was the last date in a five-week tour with only two days off: “It’s hard to be a musician.”The Silent Way Project’s keyboard-free line-up features six-string bass and drums plus two guitars widely separated and the leader on trumpet and a box of electronic tricks. The band replicates the spirit of Miles, but it doesn’t quite meet the definition of “early music” or “revivalist jazz” as being authentic music played on the original instruments. The repeat echoes and effects are clean, digital, fully functioning.