Constants and variables
On its tenth anniversary, the band decided to change its name. Thus, The Cracow Klezmer Band was transformed into Bester Quartet. ‘The word “klezmer” never weighed on me, but it caused the music I created and am creating to be pigeonholed. Not all of the compositions have and will continue to be Klezmer music, hence the change.’
Bester Quartet’s first album was released in 2012 on Tzadik. The new label has not changed the reception of the music of Jarosław Bester and his band. In the the Jazz Forum magazine, Piotr Iwicki wrote the following about Metamorphoses:
The ‘klezmer’ typical of Bester’s earlier work gives way here to an almost classical elegance that puts the whole into a framework so beautiful that, thanks to the artistry of the other members of the group [...] this music can be performed on classical as well as jazz or World Music stages.
There were some changes, however, to the band’s line-up. On Metamorphoses, bassist Wojciech Front was replaced by Mikołaj Pospieszalski. An important role is played here by the guest trumpeter Tomasz Ziętek. In this line-up, Bester Quartet also recorded The Golden Land, an album of songs by Mordechaj Gebirtig, a Kraków native, carpenter and composer from pre-war Kazimierz. In the Polityka magazine, Dorota Szwarcman wrote about this album:
Jarosław Bester and his colleagues [...] treated these melodies in their own way, weaving in the characteristic poetics known from the band’s other albums, with Piazzolla’s nuevo tango poetics somewhere in the background, with instrumental virtuosity and a predilection for unusual sound effects.