[Dixielandjazz] Jazzing Chopin

[Norman Vickers]

To: DJML and Musicians and Jazzfans lists

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

Here's Chicago Tribune article which states that Polish Musicians have been
jazzing Chopin for years.  Apparently some Italians can, as well.  I was
privileged to hear Rossano Sportiello ( now a US Citizen) play Chopin's
music and improvise on it at the Arbors Piano Jazz Party in Clearwater, FL.
Last January.  I hope it will be repeated again this year.

See article celebrating Chopin's bicentennial.

 

fnv

 

 

 

 

www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-live-0929-chopin-20100928,0,76
12493.column

chicagotribune.com

Celebrating Chopin's 200th birthday - in jazz

Howard Reich

Arts critic

9:29 AM CDT, September 28, 2010

	
	

Polish jazz musicians have been improvising on music of Chopin for decades,
but this year Chicagoans have been able to bask in more of this remarkable
work than ever.

The Chopin bicentennial, which is being celebrated wherever civilized
societies converge, has produced several Chopin-jazz marathons in Chicago
and across the Midwest. One of the most rambunctious of them played Monday
night in Symphony Center, before a small but roaring crowd.

Unlike last summer's glorious event at Millennium Park - where Polish-born,
Chicago-based jazz vocalist Grazyna Auguscik presided over a sublime evening
- the Symphony Center event unfolded almost like a variety show. With
tuxedoed violinist Krzesimir Debski doubling as emcee and traffic cop,
musicians paraded on and off the stage, re-examining Chopin's music in often
revelatory ways.

Not surprisingly, the most profound music-making again came from the lips of
Auguscik, who reaffirmed earlier impressions that she has reached a new
depth of expression in Chopin's repertoire. Performing with the unlikely -
but inspired - accompaniment of the Chicago International Trombone Ensemble,
Auguscik brought a serenely spiritual tone to resourceful jazz arrangements
of Chopin's music (mostly penned by Polish pianist Andrzej Jagodzinski).

In Chopin's Prelude in C Minor, Auguscik's ethereal, wordless vocals
captured the lyrical impulses at the core of the composer's art. It wasn't
long, however, before Auguscik laid into a series of hard-driving repeated
notes, bringing to bear the rhythmic energy of aggressive Chicago jazz.
Bassist Matt Ulery and guitarist Goran Ivanovic emphasized the point.

The sheer sensuousness of Auguscik's sound in Chopin's Prelude in E Minor
played delicately on the ear, with trombones providing rhythmic tension and
melodic counterpoint.

It all suggested that Auguscik should hasten into the recording studio to
document her ongoing Chopin experiment. This music could change the way
musicians and audiences understand the intersection between Chopin and jazz.

But there were surprises on this program, too.

The innovative Polish quartet Kwadrofonik defied conventions of
instrumentation and musical structure, its two pianists and dual
percussionists producing softly transparent sounds and mere hints of melody
and phrase. The delicate tintinnabulation of this work - with fragments of
phrases whispering, then disappearing into the ether - represented a radical
new way of addressing music of Chopin.

The composer's Prelude in E Minor rarely has sounded more diaphanous,
Kwadrofonik taking an audaciously slow tempo and including shards of the
slow movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. Ingenious.

The singer Agnieszka Wilczynska brought a voluptuous voice to "No Other
Love" - based on Chopin's Etude in E Major - though her tendency to slide
her pitch at the end of phrases veered closer to lounge crooning than jazz
singing. And multi-instrumentalist Gunhild Carling, of Sweden, though
enthusiastic, lessened the evening with her buffoonery.

All was forgiven, though, when everyone crowded the stage for the grand
finale, a riotous, quasi-symphonic, robustly swung, no-holds-barred version
of Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat Major.

You had to be there.

The concert will be repeated Oct 4 at Carnegie Hall in New York; visit
carnegiehall.org.

hreich at tribune.com