Europe’s oldest improvising orchestra, it was set up by Alexander von Schlippenbach more than half a century ago. Its beginnings are closely associated with Berlin Jazz Festival. In the spring of 1966, Schlippenbach was commissioned by the Festival curators, one of whom was Joachim Ernst Berendt, to compose a piece and perform it during the approaching third edition of that event. Since its foundation, Globe Unity’s line-up has changed many times, and included the greatest improvised music artists. During its first Polish concert, which took place at Ad Libitum festival, they were joined by Tomasz Stańko, who had previously already collaborated with that band.
Whilst THE BLUE SHROUD reflects on the human condition and the continued suffering and violence in the world […] it is certainly not meant to be an overt political statement. It is a composition that presents superb musicians in a creative scenario that reflects my humble belief that compassion is still a currency open to all, with the ultimate hope that humanity might at some stage learn from history. Barry Guy
Some of the bands established by Alexander von Schlippenbach have proved essential to the history of improvised music in Europe. One of them is Alexander Schlippenbach Trio, which has given performances uninterruptedly for five decades. I believe in long-lasting bonds between musicians, which allow them to do things impossible to achieve with someone you’ve only been playing with for a short time, explains von Schlippenbach.
Maciej Garbowski, whose bass provides the foundation for RGG trio, has been widely recognised and acclaimed. He is active in such international artistic platforms as Jazz Plays Europe and Take Five Europe. To the international music project Lutosławski Collective, which he initiated, he invited such famous musicians as singer Lena Willemark and bassist Anders Jormin. In 2002-2005 he was a member of the renowned chamber music orchestra AUKSO, directed by Marek Moś. With Piotr Damasiewicz and William Soovik, Garbowski plays music that is austere and lyrical at the same time, bridging free improvisation and jazz, looking back to tradition, but profoundly modern at the same time.
Music is a part of life that informs it and enters it, but it is not life itself. - Eddie Prévost
In our music we are searching for sounds and for the responses that attach to them, rather than thinking them up, preparing them and producing them. - Cornelius Cardew
John Cage taught her how to love every kind of sound and music regardless of source and manner of performance. While working with Giacinto Scelsi she realised one can be a composer and improviser at the same time without these two fighting with each other for spheres of influence. Derek Bailey eventually encouraged her to abandon music as a system and build her own musical world from scratch. 2016 saw her celebrating 40 years of her artistic work, which has made her into one of the finest figures in the world’s improvised music scene. This was her first concert at Ad Libitum, and her first appearance with Polish bass virtuoso Bogdan Mizerski.
When asked what he expected of his work with a group of Polish improvisers, Agustí Fernández answered: No expectations, no plans, no schedules. I am open to both the people and to any musical ideas that may emerge. Nevertheless, we as the organisers of his workshops for ten young Polish musicians, followed by a final concert, had a plan of our own. Fernández’s artistic path is marked, after all, not only by collaborations with the most famous improvisers and original projects signed with his own name, but also by the achievements of Free Art Ensemble, the product of his work with young Spanish musicians. Could we start a band with no history of its own and make it play the festival’s final concert? A band whose music would only arise there and then, embodying what is most fascinating and attractive in improvisation – risk-taking, mutual inspirations, magic moments, and joint work on creating a new musical reality? Today we may safely confirm that this project has been entirely successful.
The trio of Agustí Fernández, Barry Guy, and Ramón López made its first recordings in 2004, but the world learned about them two years later, when their CD Aurora came out. Though released without publicity and a promotion campaign, this album proved a genuine revelation, and many people wondered whether this brilliant collaboration would continue or go down in improvised music history as a one-time phenomenon created by three splendid personalities, beautiful and memorable, but without a follow-up. Today we already know that the project has been continued with more recordings and concerts, such as this one, played and recorded to mark the trio’s ten years of activity.
This was the first Polish concert of Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, which for many years was his platform in the search for balance between improvisation and notated music. A concept almost impossible to realise. A group composed of a dozen or so strong leaders positioned behind music stands, in which the individuality of each member was supposed to be reined in to suit the wider stylistic context and the dictates of a compositional plan, wrote about LJC Maciej Karłowski. Is this not what Miles Davis had in mind in the 50s, when creating the Birth of the Cool Band – in the opinion of many, the first jazz ensemble to be composed of leaders – in an attempt to reconcile the combustive nature of freedom with the rules governing a collective? That’s surely the case, but Guy went further, successfully employing the accomplishments of contemporary music, a tonal language and compositional formulas that were at a far remove from jazz, thereby creating a fusion not so much of styles as musical philosophies. (Kraków Jazz Autumn, https://en.kjj-festiwal.pl/barry-guy-new-orchestra/)
A nearly impossible concept: an ensemble made up of more than a dozen strong leaders, placed behind music stands, with a view to employing their individualities in a broader stylistic context and within a certain precomposed design, wrote about LJC Maciej Karłowski. Was it not the same concept that led Miles Davis in the 1950s to set up The Birth of the Cool Band, the first jazz leaders’ band, which attempted to combine the fiery element of freedom with rules that govern a collective? Most likely it was, but Guy went much further, successfully exploiting the achievements of contemporary music, types of sound and composition far removed from jazz, which was not merely a fusion of many styles, but an entire new philosophy of music.
Harmos, the Greek word for a union of bodies, is something more than physical unity or an artistic union of individualities. In Barry Guy’s musical world, it is a meeting place for many, frequently apparently contradictory ideas, which prove to work together surprisingly well.
The ‘conduction’ method invented by ‘Butch’ Morris is one of the most original ways of combining improvisation with composition in real time. It consists in series of gestures-commands used by the conductor during collective improvisation in order to give it a proper form. Before arriving in Warsaw, ‘Butch’ Morris taught a week-long workshop for the ‘Odyssey’ Orchestra, founded by Adam Kaczyński at the Academy of Music in Cracow. He had previously presented 167 versions of ‘conduction’ all over the world, many of which are already considered as 20th-century classics.
