The improvisations do not have titles. Nothing is suggests in writing, everything is left to listener's imagination, with no "waterfalls of prolixity".
Wlodek Pawlik Grand Piano
Label: Arms, (Poland, 2008)
"Music starts when words end" (Claude Debussy)
...the improvisations do not have titles. Nothing is suggests in writing, everything is left to listener's imagination, with no "waterfalls of prolixity." The opening of the "Track 1" subtly introduces the mood, and enslave with gentleness. Rising and descending melody line is like relaxation music focusing one's attention on what happens next. Each new tune comes in different favor, tells different story, with different dynamics, expression, and pace. The many faces of Wlodek Pawlik: cheerful, worried, lackadaisical, quarrelsome. Pawlik constantly argues with himself, and this is the voice of his piano that translates his thoughts. Pawlik's narration is both logical and transcendent at the same time, and constantly encourages the listener to join the conversation. How? Through your own thoughts..." (Marek Dusza)
on April 2008 at S1 Polish Radio Studio, Warsaw, Poland
About the recording:
When working with Wlodek in the studio, I always appreciated those moments the most, when he remained alone with the instrument. He played for himself, transposing his thoughts into the sounds of the the keyboards on his piano, all that without the pressure of time and need to play previously prepared material. That's how the concept of this album was born, the concept of associations-free narration, with no written-down program, and no system of references. The registration process skipped the step of writing the compositions on the paper, and it was completely free from interferences from the producer.
Two sessions recorded at Polish Radio Studio S1 reminded a concert, and even created an illusion of participating in creation of live music, observed by unknown to the artist public, all through the lances of hidden camera and concealed recording devices. Therefore, we rarely stopped the flow of music, but in contrary we allowed the microphone to go along with the music, rather than to determine what we hear. From nearly forty songs, we chosen in our opinion, the most interesting ones. Unfortunately we could not do otherwise, because the album would have to consist of four discs. No changes to the order in which tracks were recorded were made, and we left original versions intact to maintain continuity and fluidity of the narrative.
The tracks on the album (the improvisations) do not have titles, nor does the album. "Grand Piano" is simply the determination of the piano's score, the content of records.
We took a similar approach to the process of recording. From the beginning we knew it had to be very pure, almost "Puritan", without the use of any unnecessary resources. We used only one pair of Brauner's microphones and registered the audio with the specific target in mind (CD), to avoid the need for the conversion process. I hope that the result will suit one's taste and that we were able to reproduce the sound of purely acoustic concert and the voice of the Steinway piano. After all, the purpose of this recording, was to to to register the music as close to the one originally recorded as possible.
(Maciej Stryjecki, ARMS Records)
About the artist:
Wlodek Pawlik (born on 4 October 1958 in Kielce) is a graduate of the Conservatory in Warsaw in the class of the piano and of the HochSchule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Hamburg. He is a laureate of many national and international competitions.
Włodek Pawlik played concerts in all continents. He has composed symphonic, film, jazz, vocal and chamber music. His musical output includes KONCERT FORTEPIANOWY / THE PIANO CONCERTO. He taught at Western Michigan University and in 1999 at the International Jazz Conference in Los Angeles. He has recorded for the radio and television. He performed at the most important jazz festivals all over the world (in 1998 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Haga). He worked with American band WESTERN JAZZ QUARTET and with other famous musicians such as Richie Cole, Spike Robinson, Sal Nistico, Herb Geller, Alex Riel, Johannes Faber, Dusko Goykovic, Wolfgang Haffner, Scott Hamilton, Tom Knific, Billy Hart, Randy Brecker.
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