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The Polish reedist Waclaw Zimpel has been a somewhat regular visitor to Chicago in recent years, first appearing at the Umbrella Music Festival in 2010 and, more recently, as a member of Ken Vandermark’s Resonance Ensemble at last year’s Chicago Jazz Festival. In August he released Stone Fog (ForTune), a tender quartet album combining original tunes and group improvisations, all of which gravitate toward a subtle, restrained approach marked by Zimpel’s lyric clarinet playing (he sticks exclusively to the instrument here). By and large the reedist’s cohorts here—pianist Krzysztof Dys, bassist Christian Ramond, and drummer Klaus Kugel—tread lightly, shaping gauzy harmonies and tip-toed rhythmic structures for the clarinetist to navigate, whether he’s gently creeping through or engaging in whispering conversations with one member of the quartet or another. After the jump you can check out the album’s title track.
Before the concert began Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang, who also playing the festival, told me that Cierlinski was the best hurdy-gurdy player he’d ever seen. At the time the comment didn’t mean that much to me—I mean, how many hurdy-gurdy players have most Americans seen? But as you can plainly hear on “Sounds of Balochistan,” the track that opens the recent Seven Lines (Multikulti)—a recording of that November 1, 2012 concert—he is indeed a mind-blower, manipulating the traditional hand-cranked string instrument as a dynamic, nimble, lyric melodic device, as opposed to the drone machine it’s always been when I’ve seen someone playing it. Roginski seemed intent on eschewing the typical language and sound of jazz guitar, embracing a scrappy, unvarnished tone and unfussy lines to build tension and energy when called for; when he soloed his aesthetic seemed to borrow more from Jewish and Saharan music more than bebop, which made sense given the context of the material. Even more exciting are the fiery interactions between Zimpel (clarinet and alto clarinet) and Postaremczak (soprano and tenor saxophones), who routinely improvise in tandem, playing written unison lines and gradually diverging from the set patterns, heating up, pushing against each other, tangling up, and pulling away. They have an impressive rapport.
