Debra Richards: Hello! My name is Debra Richards and you’re listening to Rebel Spirits, a podcast about the mavericks of Poland’s jazz scene! In our first season, we brought you stories from the founders of Polish Jazz, genius minds who learned jazz from hearing it on outlawed Western radio. In the second season we brought you some of Polish jazz’s current, most exciting names, unruly artists pushing the boundaries of what we call jazz and improvised music. This season is dedicated to unique musical encounters that led to inspiring collaborations with artists from other countries. And today on the show are: Tomasz Dąbrowski and Knut Finsrud.
Tomasz Dąbrowski was commissioned to compose a piece for the closing concert of the Summer Jazz Festival in Lodz that honored trumpeter, Tomasz Stanko. The inimitable and internationally acclaimed Stanko is a powerful inspiration to Dąbrowski who describes so well the magic ingredients that lifted Stanko to the position he has in jazz as a musical hero.
The ensemble Dąbrowski brought together for this project, known as Tomasz Dąbrowski and the Individual Beings, includes Norwegian drummer, Knut Finsrud and in the most understated way we hear about this gem of a friendship between the two who both reside in the Swedish town of Malmo.
Knut's regard for Tomasz's composing talent and the way Tomasz appreciates the child-like and endlessly curious approach to music that Knut has, is part of why they get on – somehow you can imagine them riffing with each other.
There is also a quiet spirituality in the way they talk which seems to connect perfectly to the fact that the music we hear, 'JR', was written after Dąbrowski's son was born in 2020 and is dedicated to him. This touching and most human of incentives is part of what brings a special depth to the album – alongside the actual use of one of Stanko's own trumpets loaned to Dąbrowski by his daughter. A fitting bond with the ever-evolving lineage of Polish jazz musicians.
Tomasz Dąbrowski: My name is Tomasz Dąbrowski. I'm a musician. I'm a composer and I play the trumpet.
Knut Finrud: My name is Knut Arne Finsrud and I'm a Norwegian musician.
TD: Originally, I was commissioned by the summer jazz Academy Festival in Łodź. They reached out to me to compose some new music for the final concert of the festival.It was supposed to be a tribute to polish legend, and somebody that I actually had a chance to work with - Tomasz Stańko.
I have an issue with the word “tribute”. But I would say that this is as close as you can come to a tribute without playing somebody else's music one to one. The title is taken originally from Witkacy. A Polish artist who used those two words: “individual beings”, I believe 100 years ago, but Stańko seemed to like that approach very much. That we are what we are, but that's our strength. That there is only one of each of us.
KF: It’s just a very fitting name for this project. I think there are so many different personalities and each and every one has a strong, strong voice I think.
TD: And it makes sense to me to underline the fact that it is individuality and having your own voice that makes us strong. It is a fact that, when we are together, we are stronger. And this, I also wanted to translate into music and I think it worked.
KF: I think he thought about who to put together in this ensemble, people that he loves individually as musicians and as human beings.
TD: I gathered an ensemble, a seven piece band with some of my favorite musicians, people that I met before and that I had a chance to work with.
FK: Me and Tomek, we live about 20 minutes walk from my place. When we have the chance we meet once a week, and just make sounds together.
I think it's a very special relationship. And we haven't known each other that well for many years, but I consider him a close friend. And it's a very special way of communicating, which is deeply serious, but also has a lot of humor.
Since the first time I heard him or heard his compositions, I was just blown away by his ability to compose for smaller and larger ensembles. And the way he writes melodies and the rhythmical aspect of it also is super interesting. And I'm so inspired by everything he does, actually. And the way he plays also, like… just an open channel of music that just flows through him. It's super inspiring.
TD: Knut Finsrud, is a very interesting persona that I met years ago. He has one of the qualities that I admire the most in musicians. And that is that, despite years going by, when you hear him talk about music, when you hear him play, if you would just close your eyes and listen, then you would think it's like a teenage boy just playing great, for the first time, every single time he touches the instrument.
You know, there's this tendency of, like, being in the conservatories, or being at and that, you know, and mastering your, like, technical abilities. And the expression often gets forgotten. But thankfully, there are still musicians like Knut, who cherish this very, somehow, like very childish approach to music. Like it’s unknown, you never know what's going to happen, especially with improvised stuff.
KF: I was a little bit, not intimidated, but I knew that he usually wrote quite complex music, and I'm not the best reader, haha! And I told him this. And then he said, “no problem, I'll just send you the music and you’ll have time to, to check it out”. And that that was not the case here, the idea was to use all the different musician’s personalities, and what they are good at, and try to find a collective sound around that. And that's a beautiful thing, I think, and it works really well.
TD: I mean, everybody knows who Stańko was. Some of the band members had the pleasure of, like, meeting him. When you talk to Frederick or Knut, they grew up listening to Stańsko’s music. So there is a certain understanding of that stylistic.
KF: I knew him from the ECM label and his collaborations with the Scandinavian musicians that I grew up listening to.
TD: There's been so much written and told already about Stańko. So the best I can do is just, like, spread what I learned or, like, what I think was the strength of Tomasz Stańko.
It's a rather long topic. So to keep it short, Stańko had something that everybody, I mean, everybody would want, which is: a sound in his playing and in his compositions, a sound that was instantly recognizable. And I honestly think that everybody who's dealing with more or less jazz music or I think music in general, they want that. Like, they want a sound that's their own, and Tomasz Stańko had that.
Then, further you had all the melodies…
Yeah, I heard it from someone that is like very sad melodies. But that's kind of the trademark, like that's the,you know, like beautiful melancholic melodies combined with very strong harmonic direction, that is taken directly from classical music.
I wanted very much to explore possibilities with orchestration. And most of all, I wanted to gather musicians that could improvise, whatever I throw at them, musically, they can figure it out, because they have such a strong voice. And they can just make it their own right away. I feel that everything is allowed in that ensemble, we get instructions from Tomek, or someone has a suggestion of something. And it's usually Tomek, of course. And He's so relaxed, he has the confidence in everyone in the band, and just lets everyone interpret it as they want. He's actually one of the most relaxed band leaders I've ever worked with. He has trust in the people that he picked in the band. And that's amazing.
TD: And another element was to make music that is very strongly based on melodies. Yeah, how I approached this, from a compositional point of view? By the time I was writing the music, I knew exactly who's going to be the musicians that I'm going to play with. And I knew that Knut was going to play drums. So, the first, like, introduction level was just to play music that I brought and get the sound of it. And that's sort of when my responsibility as a composer ends, because if it sounds good, then I just want to set it free. And then I want the musicians to decide which way they want to approach it. Because, the reason why I play with improvisers is because I want to be surprised.
TD: I mean, I'm kind of hesitant because they're all, you know, my compositions. But if I had to choose one, that would definitely be a piece that's opening the album. A composition called JR, which are the initials of my son's name. My son was born in May 2020. And that was the time when I was writing music for the album. The idea was to describe the world of a very small child. That's just like, everywhere they look, there is something they haven't seen before. It's new. It's exciting. There are so many things to experience and to learn.
Yeah, he was just like… unstoppable.
Yeah, I'm actually curious what he's gonna, what he's gonna say. But I'm pretty sure I did tell what this is about. And then, you know, it's just one of those funny things, like, a lot of band members, I mean, most of them have kids, so they can relate in that sense, to the feeling of what is it like, how does it feel when you become a father.
KF: It’s a piece he wrote for his son,I think. It's just a beautiful melody and beautiful arrangement and everyone listens to each other and makes space for the composition too. I'm very happy about that, how it turned out.
TD: My name is Tomasz Dąbrowski. Thank you so much for having me. And this is JR
DR: This episode of Rebel Spirits was hosted my: Debra Richards, and produced by Monika Proba, Magdalena Stępień and Wojciech Oleksiak. The podcast was brought to you by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, if you'd like to listen to more music from today's featured artist please see the show notes for this episode or go to culture.pl/en/rebelspirits. Please do subscribe to Rebel Spirits wherever you get your podcasts and we’d be happy for you to share it. It’s been such a pleasure and I look forward to being with you again.