Recent Listening: Kolakowski, Finisterra, Ogerman

Mateusz Kolakowski, Ad Libitum, 1st Warsaw Jazz Concert (Zaiks). When I first heard Kolakowski, he and two of his Polish contemporaries were touring the United States with their mentor, the clarinetist Brad Terry. That was in 1998. At thirteen, the boy was an impressive jazz pianist. He has continued to develop his jazz sensibility as a student at the Music Academy of Katowice while winning international awards for his performances of Chopin.

Mateusz Kolakowski
Now twenty-one, Kolakowski is formidable in this solo concert recorded last year. He uses his classical technique to soar through wild improvisations without orbiting away from the jazz values that were apparent when he was barely into his teens. There are moments here when he seems headed toward Cecil Taylor country, but in Miles Davis’s “Nardis,” Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t” and Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady,” he creates freely while observing the composers’ outlines. His own “14th Spring” has evolved into a rhapsody melding Chopin references into the fabric of a movingly personal piece of music. If Kolakowski’s development continues at the pace and depth of the past few years, he is on his way to becoming a major pianist.
Finisterra Trio (Seasons Audio). The first CD by this young classical piano trio is a big program: the Lalo and Shostakovich trios for piano, violin and cello. More than a year ago, I wrote that a Finisterra concert performance of the Lalo was the best version I’d ever heard. This recording sustains that opinion. Their treatment of the demanding Shostakovich work, with its beauty, dissonance and pathos, is on the same level. A few weeks ago, Finisterra premiered Angel Band Trio, a new piece by Daron Hagen. To read about it, go here. Let us hope that they also record the Hagen.
Claus Ogermann, Works For Violin and Piano: Yue Deng and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Decca). Ogermann’s involvement with jazz and pop music attracts more attention than the concert work on which he has concentrated since the 1970s, but he is a contemporary composer of substance and ingenuity, as “Sarabande Fantasie,” “Duo lirico,” “Prelude and Chant” and “Nightwings” attest. These chamber pieces add to Ogermann’s achievement as a creator of classical music that manages to incorporate modern harmonic advancements while maintaining the imperative of melody. Thibaudet, one of the most acclaimed concert pianists alive, beautifully realizes Ogermann’s subtlety and dynamic shadings and supports the violin in a sensitive partnership, but it is Deng’s brilliance and purity that ring in the mind when the music has ended. It is puzzling that in the CD booklet, Decca provides no information about a young woman who is clearly a rising star of her instrument. That seems a missed opportunity for the company to promote an asset.
For more information about Yue Deng, her collaboration with pianist Roger Kellaway and her adaptation to jazz, go to this page of Kellaway’s web site.
Next time: The new Jazz Icons DVDs.