Uri Caine, photo by: Bill Douthart
The renowned accordionist Koby Israelite will play his first concert with the Polish band Samech, while Uri Caine, the U.S. pianist and composer, will present his compositions commissioned especially for Tzadik Festival, and written in honour of pianist Władysław Szpilman. What else can we expect at the Poznań festival?
Tzadik Festival owes its name to the label, founded in New York City by the musician and composer John Zorn, a lynchpin in the renaissance of the contemporary klezmer music.
Premieres
The festival is famous for its special projects – this year’s edition will feature the first joint performance by accordion player Koby Israelite with the band Samech, and the debut act of the Disgrained project.
Koby Israelite has so far released four albums with Tzadik, while the Samech quartet have made one with the label. They all share the talent for vivacious interpretations of traditional Jewish melodies. Koby Israelite seeks inspiration in contemporary and popular music – his interpretations often resonate with heavy rock orchestrations; traces of electronic music may also be found in his take on the traditional tunes. Samech remains more faithful to folk music – keeping the traditional complement of instruments, while introducing sounds derived from cultures other than Jewish.
Disgrained is a trio formed by Adam Gołębiewski, Patryk Lichota and Piotr Mełech. Their idea has been to blend the music of the Sefardic and the Ashkenazy Jews, but also that of the Jews coming from Transylvania – using an electroacoustic formula to do this. As the musicians put it:
What is most important to this project is the extraction of the mystical ingredients and transcendence – attributes which Jewish music is a magnificent vehicle for – from the its vast range and wealth, a deconstruction of musical fragments, of the sound phrases vibrating with the times past, serves musicians in creating new quality, and directing the listener’s ears towards an organic musical narration.
Uri Caine / Władysław Szpilman
The biggest element of this year’s festival is a concert by Uri Caine – the Philadelphia-based pianist and composer. Caine has recorded over 20 albums, and is most passionate about reinterpreting the work of other key musical performers – mostly the big names that we learn about at school. His first projects were focusing on the oeuvre of jazz pianists Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock; later he moved to the history of European music, with projects focused on Wagner, Beethoven, Bach and Schumann. The album that earned him most recognition was Primal Light, devoted to the music of Mahler.
In Poznań he will play two concerts – at one, he will be accompanied by Polish musicians. Together with Ksawery Wójciński and Robert Rasz he is going to revise compositions by Władysław Szpilman. His second appearances will be a premiere performance of his compositions, commissioned by the Festival, which are his personal tribute to Szpilman.
Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would say: 'Szpilman is a symbol of all of those people who survived, for there must have been plenty of unbelievable, miraculous stories of survival.'
Szpilman has left us with over 500 musical pieces – mostly variety songs. He wrote songs for Mieczysław Fogg, Irena Santor and Hanna Skarżanka. It is him to whom we owe most of the social-realist hits (Autobus czerwony / The Red Bus, Do roboty / Down to Work, Walczyk murarski / The Bricklayer’s Waltz) He was also a refined concert pianist – together with Bronisław Gimpel (first violin), Tadeusz Wroński (second violin), Stefan Kamasa (viola), and Aleksander Ciechański (cello), he helped found the Warsaw Piano Quintet. The Quintet functioned from 1962 to 1982 and played over 2,000 concerts in that line-up – they would appear in whole of Europe, as well as the U.S. and Asia.
The other Tzadik Festival acts will include:Mikołaj Trzaska the Daktari band, and Me la Amargates Tú – the winners of the Amsterdam’s International Jewish Music Competition 2008. Full programme of the festival is available at http://tzadikpoznanfestival.pl/.
Author: Filip Lech, 16.07.2013, Transl. AM 17.07.2013