Kaija Saariaho - Total Immersion day at The Barbican/Royal Opera House, London, 7 May 2023

In memoriam: Kaija Saariaho, 14 October 1952 - 2 June 2023, RIP

 

A wonderful deep dive into the soundworlds of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, which in the days since these three broadcasts has turned into a career-summing memorial.  After a lifetime investigating the confluence of spectralist music and electronics, Saariaho leaves behind a stunning catalogue of innovative music in lots of different forms.  So here's the three broadcasts of music from the Total Immersion day that took place in London last month, plus a little bonus at the end from an earlier concert in Glasgow.

In the first broadcast, Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Du Cristal, Notes On Light, Saarikoski Songs and Circle Map.  Also included here are excerpts from the day's chamber music concert, performed by students of the Guildhall School, with Changing Light, Spins And Spells and Calices zooming in on the engrossing granularity of these smaller-scale works.

Kaija Saariaho's most recent opera Innocence is a multi-lingual narrative tying together a wedding and a school shooting, and this UK premiere took place over in Covent Garden and was tied in with the Total Immersion concert broadcasts.  Lasting nearly two hours, I'm afraid this one is all in one track as I had no recording timings to refer to for even attempting to break it up into sections.  But even without being able to follow the libretto, it's a weighty, moving work that's well worth a listen.

Lastly, we return to The Barbican to hear the BBC Singers perform another UK premiere, the ecological song cycle Reconnaissance (Rusty Mirror Madrigal).  This is paired with two of Saariaho's most famous vocal works, Nuits Adieux and Tag Des Jahrs, and the broadcast is completed with more chamber music.  The bonus I've added on at the end comes from a recent concert in Glasgow that was broadcast around the same time, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performing Saariaho's Laterna Magica.

Enjoy these recordings of a composer who leaves behind some truly spellbinding music.

Broadcast 1 link

Broadcast 2 link

Broadcast 3 link

pw for all: sgtg

Kaija Saariaho at SGTG:

Du Cristal...À la Fumée, Nymphéa

Lonh, Près, NoaNoa, Six Japanese Gardens

Graal Théâtre, Solar, Lichtbogen

Überzeugung, Nuits Adieux

Vista

London Sinfonietta/Sound Intermedia - Reich/Richter (Royal Festival Hall, London, 6 April 2023)

Concert from earlier in the month, broadcast last week.  The mouthwatering programme is themed around New York composers, or those with connections to the area, its second half given over to 40 minutes of Steve Reich.

First, we get the transformed Insect sounds of Mira Calix's Nunu; the world premiere of Anna Clyne's Fractured Time, and the joyous cacophony of Julia Wolfe's Tell Me Everything, inspired by a tape of Mexican brass music.  Bookending these in the concert's first half are two arrangements of an uncharacteristically brief Julius Eastman piece, Joy Boy from 1974.  Opening the programme in a wind-centred iteration, then leading into the interval in a strings-based version, it's a great pocket-sized example of the subtle constant transformation in Eastman's music.  

Reich/Richter, composed in 2019 and given album release last year, was composed by Steve Reich to accompany an abstract film by Gerhard Richter.  The patterned, textured film was shown to the audience for this performance, but with this obviously unavailable to broadcast listeners the music has to stand by itself.  And it most certainly does, in instantly recognisable Reich form across its four sections, but still managing to sound fresh in this late period of the New York legend's career.

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pw: sgtg

BBC Concert Orchestra - Seeing The Light (recorded 26 Feb 2023)

Recent broadcast of a February concert from London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, themed around 'light'.  Starting off with Philip Glass' piece for the centenary of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the first half is rounded out with Peteris Vasks' Lonely Angel, introducing violinist Mari Samuelsen as the concert's featured soloist.  A great run of pieces after the interval, by Meredi, Guðnadóttir and Pärt further showcase Samuelsen, before the grand finale of Rautavaara's Angel Of Light symphony.  Great programme, brilliantly played.

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pw: sgtg

BBC Singers - Concert For International Women's Day 2023 (orig. rec. on 19 Jan, broadcast 8 March)

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Couple of concert broadcasts this week, starting with acapella choral music performed by the BBC Singers and aired to conincide with International Women's Day earlier this month.  The programme highlights seven female contemporary composers from around the world, the vocal texts moving from just onomatopoeic sounds to poetry to liturgical settings.  Everything sounds fantastic in the capable hands of the BBC Singers.  I really hope this isn't the last post of them performing - latest news is that they're due to be axed by the BBC, which would be a great loss.  For now, please enjoy this post of an incredible choral ensemble and the previous posts below.

 

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pw: sgtg

BBC Singers at SGTG:

Boulez, Varèse & Stravinsky

On Christmas Night

Joby Talbot & Joanna Marsh

A Christmas Carol

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Plays Scriabin, Glière & Korsun (at the Lighthouse, Poole, 17th Jan 2023)

Incredible concert recording from January, given a recent broadcast.  Chief conductor Kirill Karabits, as part of a 'Voices From The East' series, put together this programme of Ukrainian and Russian music and started it off with the stunning sonic power of Anna Korsun's Terricone, receiving its world premiere.  Karabits and Korsun, who both have roots in the Donbas region, introduce the work as having its title inspired by large mining heaps there, and it sounds phenomenal - very much appealed to the Xenakis fan in me.

The BSO's artist in residence is featured next, letting the rest of the concert's first half showcase the talent of horn player Felix Klieser (whose adapted-by-necessity technique is quite amazing).  Reinhold Glière's Horn Concerto, composed in 1951 and with strong influence from the Romantic era, contrasts well with the rest of the programme.  As an encore, Klieser offers a Rossini fanfare.  The concert's second half is given over to Alexander Scriabin's 2nd Symphony in all its grandeur and subtlety, with the gorgeous Andante being a highlight for me.  The announcer signing off with a typically bonkers quote from Scriabin is just the cherry on top.

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pw: sgtg

Scriabin at SGTG: Universe

Sándor Lakatos And His Gypsy Band - Budapest At Night (undated recordings, this compilation first released 1987)

This is the other recent find that I've been enjoying loads.  This collection's from the 80s, but the recordings (no specific years given) might be much older, as Sándor Lakatos (1924-1994) and his Gypsy Band had been releasing albums from the late 50s onwards.  All sounds fantastic though, with so much verve, energy and sheer jawdropping virtuosity brought to these Hungarian folk tunes.  Not much else to say about this one really, other than it's tons of fun.

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pw: sgtg

Satie - Orchestral Works (Toulouse Capitole Orchestra, 1988)

Couple of recent charity shop finds this week.  First up, here's a really enjoyable hour of the orchestral side of Erik Satie, which I could certainly do with exploring further.  Plasson and the Toulouse Capitole give this music all the subtlety, wit and charm it requires in a beautifully detailed recording from 1988.

A definite highlight of this collection is Satie's music for Parade, a surreal one-act ballet devised by Jean Cocteau, choreographed by Leonide Massine and with bizarre cubist costumes by Picasso.  Lasting only 15 minutes, the score includes the sounds of typewriters and foghorns - allegedly at Cocteau's insistence over Satie's distaste, but in hindsight sounding like an influence on Varèse, who was acquainted with Satie around this time.  Moving from surrealism to Dada, Francis Picabia's ballet Relâche ("Cancelled") sparkles with Satie's lush, expressive and witty score.

Elsewhere, Satie's sense of playfulness and influences from Fin De Siècle cabaret make the dance suite La Belle Excentrique an uproarious joy, and the Varèse-commissioned Cinq Grimaces occupies a similar space.  There's also opportunity on this album to just luxuriate in the sublime compositional genius of Satie in arrangements of works originally for piano (or written in both piano and orchestral forms).  Gymnnopodies No. 1 & 3 are here in orchestrations by Debussy, Gnossienne No. 3 by Poulenc, and Satie's own settings of La Piccadilly and En Habit De Cheval.  A hugely recommended collection.

 

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pw: sgtg 

Erik Satie at SGTG:

Piano Works

Gnossiennes/Ogives

Messe Des Pauvres

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Plays Xenakis, Debussy, Ligeti & Bartók (15 December 2022)

Concert broadcast from Glasgow last month, with the announcer opening on a Xenakis quote: "savageness is part of everyday life".  With such a weighty introduction, you'd be expecting some fireworks, and the musicians of the BBC SSO certainly deliver in the opening blast of Xenakis' computer-composed Atrées.  But there's subtlety too, in the sumptuous rendering of Debussy's Jeux that fills out the concert's first half.

Ilan Volkov, a conductor I always like for his relish for the avant-garde, talks us through the tuning used for Ligeti's Ramifications before taking the two groups of strings into the piece's still-remarkable miasma of sound.  The grand finale is another landmark in 20th century music, Bartók's Music For Strings, Percussion & Celesta, sounding riveting all the way from the grand sweep at its outset through the eerie third movement and beyond.

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pw: sgtg

Iannis Xenakis at SGTG:

Akea, Ittidra, À. R,, piano fragment  

Palimpsest, Épéi, Dikhtas, Akanthos

Pour La Paix/Voyage Absolu   

Nuits  

Rebonds B  

Akrata  

Atrées, Morsima-Amorsima etc  

Evryali/Herma   

Phlegra, Jalons etc
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis

 

György Ligeti at SGTG:

Clear Or Cloudy: Complete Recordings On Deutsche Grammophon

Requiem, Aventures, Nouvelles Aventures 

Artikulation

Spending some "Time" with Dave Brubeck, to end the year (1959, 1961, 1966)

And yep, it's SGTG breaktime once again. Thanks for all your comments, and for enjoying all the music.  As to where this blog goes from here, I think it'll definitely just be occasional posts, when there's an interesting radio concert to share, or the results of a quirky charity shop haul.  The whole 'sharing a massive CD collection and writing about it just because I wanted to' thing that sparked this off is pretty much done & dusted now, and has been hugely satisfying.  Thanks everyone for being part of it.

To leave things for now, here's a triple header by an artist I took far too long to give some serious time to, starting in the annus mirabilis of album jazz: 1959.  The Dave Brubeck Quartet had made a name for themselves in West Coast cool jazz over the course of the decade, and were becoming influenced by folk forms experienced on a tour of Eurasia, as evidenced by a 1958 album.

Their smash hit album a year later took the 'quirky time signatures' USP and just ran with it, creating indelible instant classics like Blue Rondo A La Turk and Paul Desmond's Take Five.  Beyond these standouts, the Time Out album contains absolute loveliness like Strange Meadow Lark and Kathy's Waltz, and my personal favourite, the effortlessly cool elegance of Three To Get Ready.

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pw: sgtg

The success of Time Out led to a handful of sequels, so here's a couple of them.  First up, from 1961, is Time Further Out - subtitled Miro Reflections as a nod to the cover art.  The album's running order is structured so as to progressively add more beats to the bar, starting off with a pair of waltzes and featuring another couple of pieces in 5/4, as well as the 7/4 of its best-known track Unsquare Dance.  Brubeck's dexterous pianism and the rhythm section's ability to play absolutely in-the-pocket regardless of the meter continue to be absolute joys, as is the breezy melodic sensibility of this coolest of quartets.

 

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pw: sgtg

The 'time' albums then concluded five years later with Time In, credited to Brubeck only on the cover but still featuring the classic quartet within.  This gorgeous record makes more sparing use of quirky time signatures, and after the full-tilt Lost Waltz that opens the album tends towards breezier mid-tempo tunes that hone in on the quartet's effortless interplay.  Not sure if it's because Time In was the least familiar to me of these three albums (that were found together in a box set), but I've been returning to it the most for sheer enjoyment.  And that feels like as good a place as any to leave SGTG for the moment.  Happy new year when it comes, everyone!

 

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pw: sgtg

Bruce Cockburn - Further Adventures Of (1978)

Always love a bit of late 70s Bruce Cockburn around the turn of the year, so after posting the masterpiece a few years back (link below), here's the one just before it.  More jazz-inflected arrangements, lyrics taking in the expected singer-songwriterly personal reflections with a heavy dose of Christian mysticism, and that incredible guitar playing.  A couple of more muscular tracks, Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth.... and Feast Of Fools, provide a good contrast to the lighter-hued material, and Red Ships Take Off In The Distance is one of his most dazzling instrumentals.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Dancing In The Dragon's Jaws

BBC Singers - A Christmas Carol (Milton Court, London, 14th Dec 2022)

Have a wonderful Christmas weekend, everyone.  Here's a concert recording that gives a fresh setting to a classic seasonal tale that I've been enjoying since its broadcast a week ago.  The BBC Singers first give a spirited half-hour of Christmas arrangements and carols old and new, and are then joined by Mel Giedroyc to narrate the rest of the concert.  It's a musical arrangement of Dickens' A Christmas Carol by composer Benedict Sheehan, weaving well-known carols into Sheehan's own music to set the story in a delightful new context, here receiving its UK premiere. 

Merry Christmas!

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pw: sgtg

Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Lontano (2006)

Recorded in November 2005, Lontano was the conclusion to a trilogy of albums recorded by the Tomasz Stańko Quartet: the trumpeter, now in his sixties, backed by a trio of fellow Poles half his age, who'd continue to produce great music in their own right.  The quartet's expansive, cinematic feel for space and patient, at times near-ambient improvisational pace reached their apex in the diffuse, impressionistic music on this aptly-titled album.

At the album's core are its title tracks, numbered I, II and III, a total of 40 minutes of free improvisation credited to the full group.  Whether they were all recorded as a single session or as three separate takes I'm not sure, but the Lontano tracks provide the deepest expression of this quartet's spacious sensibility, the shorter pieces that surround them highlighting the spare beauty of Stańko's writing and more sublime playing.  Stańko reaches back to his first ECM appearance for a fresh take on Tale, and even further to his first appearance on LP, the muscular version of Komeda's Kattorna giving an upbeat contrast to sublime ballads like Song For Ania and Sweet Thing.  A masterpiece of an album that keeps on giving with every listen.

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pw: sgtg

Tomasz Stańko at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland
Purple Sun

TWET 

Balladyna
Freelectronic in Montreux
Bluish
Bosonossa And Other Ballads
Matka Joanna 

Suspended Night

Neighbourhood (Manu Katché) 

Wolność W Sierpniu - Freedom In August
Dark Eyes
Wisława
Polin

Tribute To Tomasz Stańko, London Jazz Festival 2022

Echoes Of Nature - Wilderness River (1993)

The charity shop oddities just keep coming at the moment - here's an addition to that small corner of SGTG that features no music at all, but just captures a variety of natural sounds and presents them in album format.  This one, on the budget LaserLight label's Echoes Of Nature series from the 90s, offers exactly an hour of riverside recordings across four continuously-mixed tracks.  

 

The self-descriptive titles - Big River, Streamside Songbirds, Small Rapids and Crickets & Water - are pretty much all you need to know, other than it's all well recorded (that DDD coding is making me picture someone with a DAT machine in their backpack and a couple of microphones dangling over a bridge), and it does the job if you want to relax with nature for a bit.

link

pw: sgtg

Arvo Pärt - Miserere (1991)

It's definitely Pärt weather now, so dropping in on the great Estonian composer today at the turn of the 90s.  Settled in by this time to a fruitful relationship with ECM New Series, the three works featured here were recorded in late 1990 with the Hilliard Ensemble, Western Wind Chamber Choir, Beethovenhalle Orchestra and others.

The 34-minute title piece comes first, with its stark choral liturgy interspersed with orchestral swells and the organ playing of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.  Miserere remains one of Pärt's most immersive works in its controlled power, and it sounds sublime in this first recording.  A short respite is programmed next in Festina Lente, very much cut from the same cloth as the Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten.  We return to Old Testament liturgy for the final track, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old, but wordlessly.  An intermittent drumbeat forms the backbone of the piece as the Hilliards in turn add plaintive melodies, the culiminative effect (once Broadbent's organ enters for the finale) being another masterpiece of steady pacing to thoroughly entrance the patient listener.  This might not be Pärt's easiest album to get in to, but it pays some of the greatest rewards.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Tabula Rasa

Kanon Pokajanen

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble - Officium (1994)

Been giving this a fresh appraisal, so why not turn it into a post.  In a quirk of tapping in to the listening moods of the time, Jan Garbarek spontaneously joining in at a Hilliards rehearsal turned into one of ECM's breakout hits with the buying public, so the story goes.  There were sequels, but this first collaborative album between the early music singers and saxophonist remains a very 90s phenomenon all of its own.  So how does it hold up these days?

Officium certainly sounds breathtaking.  You'd expect nothing less from an ECM New Series recording of the Hilliard Ensemble, taking advantage of the resonances of the St. Gerold priory in Grosses Walsertal, Austria.  Flitting in and out is the ahistorical, but somehow seeming like a natural added voice, sound of Garbarek's saxes, equally attuned to the natural reverb.  An hour-plus immersion in this sound-world is definitely a sublime experience.

In terms of material, the album flits through the Hilliards' repertoire from the 12th to 16th century, giving a nice balance of starker, plainer material (including the odd solo spotlight) with more complex and interweaved voicings.  Garbarek doesn't overpower the singers, but finds subtle harmonies and drones with which to enhance the music.  The end result might be an early vocal music purist's nightmare, but for anyone willing to take the chance on this hybrid, as soon as you acclimatise to it it's a delight.  The only thing I sometimes wonder is if 77 minutes is a bit too much of the same thing for a single sitting, but on those occasions the first reprise of Parce Mihi Domine is a handy staging post to focus on one half of a double-album.  Overall, beautiful stuff that still stands up.  Must get hold of the other albums someday.

link

pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Othello Ballet Suite

Trip To Prillarguri

Listen To The Silence

Afric Pepperbird

Sart
Triptykon
Popofoni

Witchi-Tai-To

Dansere
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

The Hilliard Ensemble at SGTG:

Perotin

The Lamentations Of Jeremiah

Codex Speciálník

Transeamus

Annie Gosfield - Flying Sparks And Heavy Machinery (2001)

Appropriately-titled release from New York-based composer Annie Gosfield (b. 1960, Philadelphia).  This album, her second of four for John Zorn's Tzadik label, presents two works "developed in 1999 during a six-week residency in the factories of Nuremberg" designed to "combine art and industry".  The three-part, 42-minute EWA7 that takes up the bulk of the album is based on the mechanical sounds and rhythms of its titular factory where the premiere performance was held, with the 'Cylinders' portion taken from this original recording.

 

Engines whir into life in the opening section, gradually joined by metallic clangs developing into interlocking rhythmic patterns.  The passages of eerie subtlety in this first movement, with electronics by Ikue Mori, are particularly effective in contrast to the industrial-racket expectations that the next two parts deliver on.  By this point, with drving rhythms underpinning the other noises, comparisons with Einstürzende Neubauten are inescapable, but honestly, who cares - if you like this sort of thing, Gosfield puts it together really, really well, and it's such riotous fun to crank up loud.  

 

The shorter work that closes the album and provides its title takes similar inspiration from industrial sounds, but writes them in to a (slightly) more conventional context for string quartet and percussion quartet.  It's a nice conclusion to a very satisfying album which makes me want to listen to more of Gosfield's music (believe it or not, this one was a charity shop find, earlier this year).

link

pw: sgtg

Alexei Lubimov - Der Bote: Elegies For Piano (2002)

A sublime programme, and one spanning the centuries from baroque to modern, performed by Alexei Lubimov (b. 1944, Moscow).  This recording was made by DRS Radio in Zurich at the end of 2000, and released as an ECM New Series album a year and a half later.

 

Kicking off with a 20-minute stretch that pairs CPE Bach and John Cage, it's clear that this is no ordinary classical solo piano recital.  But you know what, the Fantasie Für Klavier and a nice pacey In A Landscape complement each other just fine, and things just get more interesting from there.  With an overall theme of 'elegies', and an album title of 'the messenger' (taken from the haunting final piece), as a concept piece it plays out well, and just sounds heavenly.  Balancing stock repertoire choices like Liszt, Chopin and Debussy with the kind of more recent composers that have long been Lubimov's interest (Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov), he turns in a great set that feels satisfying from beginning to end on every listen.

link

pw: sgtg

George Russell's New York Band - Live In An American Time Spiral (rec. 1982, rel. 1983)

Finishing up this little box set of George Russell's incredible music with the composer firmly focused on his New York Big Band, who we heard in their initial incarnation last time.  Only a couple of members from that group remained by the time of this recording at the end of July 1982, and the lineup here's as strong as any Russell band.  Just three long pieces: taking up all of the album's first half is Time Spiral, a Swedish Radio commission written in 1979.  Starting from mellow electric piano, it boils over more than once into a funk monster with plenty of scorching solo spots.  The rest of the album digs into Russell's rich back catalogue all the way to the late 40s, in a barnstroming Ezz-Thetic, and early 60s for D.C. Divertimento which gets a groove-smoking makeover.  Tons of fun from a firey ensemble.

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pw: sgtg

The rest of the "Complete Black Saint & Soul Note" box set:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Trip To Prillarguri

Othello Ballet Suite

Listen To The Silence

Vertical Event VI

New York Big Band

Giya Kancheli - Symphonies No. 1 & 7, Mourned By The Wind (1992)

Some more recordings of the Georgian master of steely storminess and melancholy calm, all taped in Moscow in September 1992.  The 'world premiere recording' banner up there I assume only refers to Kancheli's 7th Symphony (composed in 1986), as the other works on the disc both had prior releases - see links below for an earlier Mourned By The Wind.

This album, then, functions as a kind of bookending of Kancheli's symphonic era, that began in 1967 with his 1st and ended 19 years later with the aforementioned 7th.  Symphony No. 1's two movements show early signs of the Kancheli trademarks - fluctuating dynamics, especially in the choppy first movement, then a more languid solemnity in the second (love that twinkling percussion though).  The dramatic fireworks and passages of elegaic respite of Symphony No. 7 are contained in a single, flowing movement lasting 21 minutes.  Some later recordings are noted as proper blow-your-speakers-out monstrosities, but this premiere doesn't sound too extreme.

In between the symphonic bookends sits a lovely rendering of Mourned By The Wind, Liturgy for Viola and Orchestra.  It's not drastically different in approach to the 1988 Georgian recording, more a matter of taste - occasional little subtleties are more apparent in one version than in another.  Nice to have a contrast.

 

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pw: sgtg

 

Giya Kancheli at SGTG: 

Symphonies No. 3 & 6

Bright Sorrow/Mourned By The Wind (80s recordings)

BBC Concert Orchestra / Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Tribute To Tomasz Stańko (live at EFG London Jazz Festival, 16th Nov 2022)

As the noted in the radio host's intro, the late, great Tomasz Stańko would've been 80 this year.  An ideal time for a tribute concert, then - and this one definintely delivers the goods, with the trio who worked with him for several years augmented by orchestra and special guests.  Since the Polish trumpeter's death four years ago, we've been left with a truly great catalogue in European jazz, and the impression (I certainly get) that Stańko just kept getting better with age.  His last few years are my favourite to return to over and over, and music from this period forms the core of the setlist, the elegaic melodies enhanced by the BBC Concert Orchestra in ways that serve the material well.

The first half begins with Yankiel's Lid and Street Of Crocodiles from Polin (links to other albums below), spotlighting young saxophonist Emma Rawicz.  To fill the essential trumpet role, we then get Avishai Cohen for the rest of the evening, starting with a beautiful rendition of the Wisława title track.  More guests are introduced by way of a duet interlude - guitarist Rob Luft, a recent addition to the ECM stable, backs singer Alice Zawadzki on a folk song arrangement of hers.  Luft is then the featured player as we return to Stańko's music for Terminal 7, to lead in to the interval - and I've left this 20-minute section of the broadcast intact for a change, as the announcer features clips of an interview with Stańko recorded in 2008.

 

Tomasz Stańko's early association with Krzysztof Komeda, mentioned in the interval, is also reflected in the concert resuming with the Lullabye from Rosemary's Baby, sung by Zawadzki backed by the orchestra. Stańko's own music for film and theatre is also touched on, with A Farewell To Maria and Roberto Zucco - good to hear from a corner of the Stańko ouevre that remains lesser-known (not least because those obscure soundtracks could do with being reissued).  Other than Celine, an arrangement of material from Suspended Night, the rest of the set returns to the Wisława album - Faces, April Story and then a brief rip through Assassins to close a superb concert.  Avishai Cohen sounds fantastic throughout, given the not inconsiderable task of stepping into Stańko's shoes; the Marcin Wasilewski Trio a perfect link to the composer in life (and Wasilewski is always such an incredible pianist), and well-chosen guests and sympathetic arrangements all make this a fitting tribute.  If you love Stańko's music even half as much as I do, don't miss this one.

link

pw: sgtg

Tomasz Stańko at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland
Purple Sun

TWET 

Balladyna
Freelectronic in Montreux
Bluish
Bosonossa And Other Ballads
Matka Joanna 

Suspended Night

Neighbourhood (Manu Katché) 

Wolność W Sierpniu - Freedom In August
Dark Eyes
Wisława
Polin