Are we getting too much of Polish free-form jazz and other jazz? The answer is a definite NO!!! With capital letters and countless exclamation points after it.
The history of Polish jazz after 1955 is something completely unique and special, unlike anything else.
Polish free jazz
When jazz became globalized after 1960, and gradually settled in new local cultural circles, when jazz became glocalized, it went from being an American musical tradition to becoming a multifaceted, global musical expression. According to the traditional myths, jazz originated in the American South and the Caribbean, with roots in the freed slave population’s use of music for self-preservation, entertainment and self-realization. From this starting point, jazz conquered the world as an expression of the longing for freedom and equality, for the same mythical story.
The truth is that in the history of music, jazz and its descendants within what we today refer to as improvised music have always been a fusion music. And like all folk music in the world, it is not the written music that is its central essence and quality. The classically trained music analyst is used to sitting for hours interpreting complex, composed scores, with the aim of performing and reproducing them in a way that realizes the composer’s intentions. This analyst will never be able to capture what drove jazz forward, what changed it into the complex, composite art music of today.
… is social music
Social music, like all folk music in itself, is music in which the performance and the community around the experience are created by the performance. It is not, in the same way as with the composed music in a European musical tradition, a more or less intellectual experience of the music that is the center of the music. What is central is the social experience and communication between performers, the performed music, and the audience, which is the central thing. This falls outside the classical analyst’s schema.
That is why Theodor W. Adorno could also write the essays “Abschied vom Jazz” in 1933 and “Über jazz” in 1936. Now, in his defense, it must be said that these texts were written at a time in music history when swing jazz had developed into an enormous, continental entertainment industry. Swing music was the very first billion-dollar entertainment industry, based on two technological innovations, radio technology and the development of a system for transmitting music and speech far and wide to a large audience, and the development of physical carriers of musical information. Adorno’s description of the music as banal, and without artistic qualities, it was based on mechanically implemented and simplified musical schemes, made it, he believed, totally soulless, jazz thus has ‘no soul’, according to Adorno.
Adorno’s view of jazz was that it was a popular cultural expression of the entertainment industry’s ‘commodification’ of music – that is, that music had developed into a formulaic manufactured (economic) commodity. As such, it had reached its popular musical end, he believed. Therefore, a possible ban on this music was completely unnecessary. That it would die of itself in a short time is a possible interpretation of Adorno’s position.
The paradox is that it is the modernist-based analysts’ reification of the composition, of the work itself, that seems to represent the real reification of music. From such a standpoint, it is difficult to understand music as a social process, and not as a Platonic ideal. The composition is an ideal that in performance casts shadows on the cave wall that can be heard. When jazz went from being a what to becoming a how, when jazz became a way of performing any music, the modernists did not follow suit.
… with a long history
The further history is, as is well known, complex and ambiguous. We know that the history of improvised music would have a different outcome than Adorno expected; jazz was only just out of the starting block when Adorno judged it doomed. Central to the further history was the concept of solo improvisation. Such improvisation became, during the 1920s and later, the essence and center of the practice and performance of this music.
This developed in the mid-1920s, and it proved to be a platform that was extremely malleable, and a springboard for further development and exploration. A similarly essential performance platform eventually also became important in the new contemporary music after 1955. It was a platform that would eventually also prove to make improvised music footloose, so that its central characteristics could in principle take root in all kinds of cultural soils. Today, improvised contemporary music is also an integral part of today’s conservatory philosophy in large parts of the world.
These are thoughts that require significantly more space, and that will be left aside in a record review, even in a magazine like salt peanuts*. Let it be said, however, that one of the very first places in the world where the new ‘jazz’ and the new view of it created a rich breeding ground for a new music was in the jazz circles of Warsaw and other cities in Poland. The showdown with Stalinism and the so-called Polish October, when Władysław Gomułka became First Secretary of the United Workers’ Party, led to a period of reform that also made it possible to develop a culture of freedom around improvised music in Poland. Soon, a distinctive music scene would grow out of the rich Polish culture.
… where Dr. Komeda laid the foundation
A medical student, Krzysztof Trziński, and later a doctor specializing in ear, nose and throat, was also a performing pianist. To distinguish his two personas, the musician and the doctor, he chose a stage name as a musician, Komeda. Krzysztof Komeda would become the central father and protégé of new generations of young jazz musicians who emerged in Poland over the next fifteen years, until Komeda tragically died in April 1969 after a fall.
One of these young musicians was the trumpeter Tomasz Stańko. In 1965, Komeda was invited to the very first Kongsberg Jazz Festival. A quartet with young Stańko, Swede Rune Carlsson on drums and Roman Dylag on double bass played St. Hans weekend 1965 in Gamlekinoen at the top of Klokkerbakken, at the intersection with Sølvverksgata. Although no recording of the concert exists, it is reasonable to assume that they played Komeda’s “Svantetic”, “Kattorna” and perhaps “Astigmatic”. I have been told that there were 17 people in the large hall when the concert started, and by the end there were far fewer left in the hall. This was demanding music for a Norwegian jazz audience in the mid-1960s.
I was lucky enough to have a long conversation with Stańko once, where he very strongly emphasized the importance of Komeda. In the conversation, he also told me that the trip to Kongsberg was his first trip abroad. Or rather, it was probably one of his first, in the article “The Montmartre 1959-1976”, Erik Wiedemann can tell that Stańko already in February of this year also played with Komeda at Montmartre in Copenhagen. A double CD has been released several times in Poland with what is probably a recording from the concert in Montmartre in February 1965.
… and Stanko was his disciple
That same year, Komeda’s quintet recorded with Stańko in the studio the eminent album Astigmatic. Listen to that music, remember that the bandleader is a doctor, and think about the meaning of the title – astigmatism is the visual defect that occurs due to so-called ‘crooked corneas’. The rest is important Polish jazz history.
The first album Stańko released with his own band was, as far as I know, recorded in January 1970 and entitled Music for K. This is also the year this wonderful box set, released on LP and CD, by the Polish national broadcaster, Polskie Radio, starts. And how fitting it is that it starts with a recording from PR’s studio of Komeda’s “Kattorna”, originally written as film music for filmmaker Henning Carlsen’s Swedish film of the same name.
The first five of the six CDs are based on studio recordings from Polskie Radio, presented chronologically. The last CD is a live recording from February 9, 1983.
… through many decades
The first CD covers the years 1970-71, with the same band that Stańko had with him on Music for K, i.e. with saxophonists Zbigniew Seifert and Janusz Muniak, drummer Janusz Stefański and Bronisław Suchanek on bass.
The second CD – 1974-75 – shows new sides of Stańko. In a trio recording with Adam Makowicz on Rhodes electric piano, with Czesław Bartkowski on drums. The first track was recorded in September 1970, and gives the Stańko composition “Placebo” a contemporary characteristic that I can only characterize as Milesesque, Miles anno 1968-70, from the time of the Lost Quintet. This band – which called itself Tomasz Stańko-Adam Makowicz UNIT – also gives us great versions of Coltrane’s “Countdown” and “Giant Steps”.
At this time, Stańko had begun his long-standing collaboration and friendship with Edward Vesala. Together they released the album TWET in 1974, I assume a play on the initials of the four musicians on the record: Tomasz, Warren, Edward and Tomasz (Suzanski). This was a collaboration that also led to the very first ECM release with Stańko – Balladyna. I had hoped that some recordings with Vesala from this and the following period would turn up. But alas.
The next, and third CD, is a recording from a day in February 1975 with a trio consisting of Stańko on trumpet and piano, with Tomasz Szukalski on woodwinds and Czesław Bartkowski on drums and percussion. In editing the recording they have used overdubbing to expand the game. Stanko’s “Bluish” is here faded in and out, but it is interesting to compare this version from 1975 with the one that Stańko did in 1991 with Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen on the album that was named after this song.
… over large parts of the world
In the next ten years Stańko traveled widely. He was in India with Vesala, and played for a long period in Cecil Taylor’s larger ensembles. In 1983 he launched his project called C.O.C.X., with a self-titled album released in 1985, and he released the album Music 81. At the same time he launched the project Freelectronics.
And it is Freelectronics that is the theme of the fourth CD in the collection, a quartet with two musicians on synthesizers, piano, bass guitar and trumpet. The music was recorded in 1985-86, and supplements the double LP Witkacy Peyotl / Freelectronic, where the second LP is a live recording with the quartet. Exploratory, ambient music that points far into the future.
The fifth and last studio CD was recorded at Polskie Radio in January 1991. A pure duo recording with Witold Szczurek on double bass and Stańko’s trumpet, one of the very first digital recordings made on Polish radio. Lyrical open jazz, with only the most basic structures laid out in advance. The rest arises in the moment.
The last CD is a live recording broadcast from the Warsaw Aquarium club on February 9, 1983. Stańko on trumpet, Apostolis Anthimos on electric guitar, Jerzy Kawalec, bass guitar, Witold Szczurek on double bass, Andrzej Ryszka on drums and José Torres on congas. This is perhaps the weakest link in the box. The real prize is the first five CDs, which give us an insight into Tomasz Stańko’s workshop and laboratory over two decades.
Finally
I haven’t counted how many ECM albums with Stańko have been released, but after 1995 there are probably 10-12 albums released with documentation of Tomasz Stańko’s music. The problem has always been to fill the large gaps between 1970 and 1995 in Stańko’s discography. This box set contributes greatly to making those gaps less prominent.
The editor of the collection writes in his introduction that “This selection of studio recordings … is a gift for jazz lovers for the 100th anniversary of the national Polish Radio”. This implies that there is more in these archives. We can only hope that we don’t have to wait until the 150th anniversary of Polish Radio to have access to more of what is described as “… dozens of hours of original music or recorded with Tomasz Stańko as a sideman. These tapes – and countless of live recordings – were never released, or, for the most part, not even aired”!
We are already looking forward to it.
Tomasz Stańko (trumpet, piano, hunting horn), Zbigniew Seifert (alto saxophone, violin), Janusz Muniak (tenor saxophone, percussion), Bronisław Suchanek (double bass), Janusz Stefanski (drums), Adam Makowicz (Rhodes piano, Rhodes Piano Bass), Czesław Bartkowski (drums, percussion), Tomasz Szukalski (tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet), Witold Szczurek (double bass, bass guitar), Janusz Skowron (synthesizer Roland JX-3P, piano), Tadeusz Sudnik (electronics, synthesizer EMS), Apostolis Anthimos (electric guitar), Jerzy Kawalec (bass guitar), Andrzej Ryszka (drums), José Torres (congas)
![Tomasz Stańko – „Polish Radio Sessions 1970-1991” [RECENZJA] - Polska Płyta / Polska Muzyka](https://i0.wp.com/polskaplyta-polskamuzyka.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/stanko.jpg?resize=525%2C283&ssl=1)
