Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski - On The Road Vol.1

1. Altissimonica Part III (excerpt) 15:24
2. Seans na niepogodę 6:50
3. Inwersja 11:05
4. Moritat 13:38
5. Po wielkim niżu 10:15

All compositions by Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski, except [4] by Kurt Weill 

Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski – tenor saxophone
Wojciech Niedziela – piano
Jacek Niedziela-Meira – double bass [1, 2, 3]
Andrzej Święs –  double bass [4, 5]
Marcin Jahr – drums 

THE GENERAL OF POLISH JAZZ. Extensive excerpts from an interview that Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski gave to Krzysztof Balkiewicz. 

► K.Balkiewicz: Jerzy Duduś Matuszkiewicz once said in an interview that the beginnings of playing jazz, the style in which one started playing, strongly affected future musical decisions. How was it in your case?

P. Wróblewski: In my amateur days I mainly played swing, but those were just first efforts. It’s true, the time you get into something and what it is you get into, stays with you as a kind of affection. But later, what you get up to when you start going professional is something of a second start. I once found myself at such a turn between one thing and the next. Playing with Komeda, I got into modern jazz, but later I often played around with traditional projects. I even performed with the Old Timers, formed a duo with Paweł Tartanus, played with Towarzystwo Nostalgiczne Swingulans, with Chałturnik… There was quite a lot going on. But I treated it all as fun, as a form of escape… Actually, yes, swing has been with me a lot more often than I thought… 

► How would you define your style?

It’s hard to say. I think my playing probably contains mostly hard bop. But that’s how it is: a few new things from here, a few from there – it’s hard to avoid. I definitely still show some influences even from swing, but I wouldn’t want to classify my style in any way. My main area of interest has certainly been hard bop. 

► If someone is a modern musician, is it possible for them to revel in traditional jazz?

Definitely! I have a few favourites who play traditional jazz, and I value some of them even higher than the later modernists. 

► How would you explain this?

It’s always a give and take thing. Traditional jazz was awfully simple – almost trivial, but in terms of interpretation and tone colour it was far above what is going on today. Today people don’t have time to think about details, and back then that’s what they did. Armstrong thought about each note separately. 

► Is it possible to draw on old masters and process their output into one’s own modern thinking?

You can process it, but you can also simply like those musicians. Actually, let someone try to show me a better pianist than Art Tatum. There isn’t one! This is old stuff, but we still listen to it, mouths agape. There are many such musicians… I also don’t know if I’ve ever met a better clarinettist than Benny Goodman. 

► Although that’s history really…

Yes, but it’s so flawless. It will never grow old! 

► I’ve noticed that when one listens to a great artist, it no longer matters what style they play in. You just don’t think about it. Style as such fades into the background – it’s completely unimportant.

Of course. Actually, those style elements are often intertwined. It’s a rule of jazz that a style is a person. Everybody should have their own style. Unfortunately, it has lately been the case – maybe because of the defective training system – that schools produce, say, saxophonists, and ten of them play exactly the same way. I remember that wildest time of mine, namely the 1950s: back then, there was no way you could confuse two musicians. You couldn’t get Bud Powell, Horace Silver or any other pianist – Peterson or whoever – mixed up. On the saxophone, Phil Woods and Julian Cannonball Adderley sounded completely different. 

► Your sound is recognisable after the first note. How is that possible?

Anybody engaging in playing music necessarily tunes in with something they need. They like a particular tone colour and dislike another, so everything else adjusts to that: their mouth, mouthpiece, reed, and it’s hard to change that later. 

► So the way you sound depends on the reed to some extent?

Yes. A reed can be adjusted, but some reeds don’t suit me. If I don’t have the right reed, my mouth won’t work – the instrument will get stuck – it won’t kick off. Full stop. 

► Can we say that there are national styles in jazz, e.g. does Scandinavian jazz exist?

No… I mean, it supposedly does, but I hate the expression. I foam at the mouth when anyone mentions Euro-jazz. That’s because in my day, as I recall, Euro-jazz meant that European jazz musicians couldn’t play like Americans, so they showed off with supposedly symphonic pieces or third streams or whatever, claiming it was original and it was Euro-jazz. No; it’s jazz that is not jazz. As for Scandinavian… It’s hard to say… Something of their folk feeling did surface and still does, maybe not everywhere, but here and there. But style applies to a given musician, not necessarily a country. 

► What about Polish jazz?

Our jazz does have some Polish features that we all share, definitely. We may not even realise it. 

► There’s an element of Slavic, Polish lyricism in Komeda.

I wouldn’t make that distinction – to me, it’s Komeda’s lyricism, not Polish. Yes, Komeda’s lyricism is original, very original… 

► There have been a few giants in the history of jazz who changed the jazz world: Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane.

Unfortunately, there haven’t been many. 

► Which of them was most important to you?

If we’re talking not about learning but about listening, then Davis will always come first. His playing has something about it that sets it apart from everything – it’s bloody convincing – whatever he plays. Because, at one point Davis played with bands that were plain rock – and not jazz – bands. But he played jazz! There are so many people I love. Just among the tenorists, I wouldn’t even know who to mention – Rollins, or Coltrane, or Webster… There’s something great about each one of them. 

► What about the musician who fascinated you the most as a performer, as a saxophonist?

That changed. Initially it was definitely Rollins, but after that it was Coltrane. I don’t know who else I’d mention… 

► Is there any chance of a revolutionary emerging in world jazz, who would propel jazz in a completely new direction? Or, have such possibilities been exhausted?

I hope there is. There’s no question of any exhaustion – the possibilities are vast and open all the time. 

► Some claim that in terms of development, Coltrane brought jazz to completion.

Not quite; he brought it to a boundary in the direction in which he was looking. But then lots of new elements emerged in all those post-Coltrane things. I don’t know if it’s all moving forward or not. In Poland it’s kind of accepted that if someone plays free [jazz] – without harmony – then that’s more modern. It’s not true! It isn’t necessarily so. I don’t know what elements decide about something being truly modern. It’s really hard to say. 

► Who would you single out from among contemporary world musicians?

That’s tough. So many musicians have popped up in recent years that I can no longer keep up. All of them are capable, that’s for sure, but which of them will stay for longer is hard to say. From the youngest group, there’s no one I’d single out. From previous periods, it would be Joe Henderson, Joe Lovano and Jerry Bergonzi. 

► How would you describe contemporary jazz in Poland?

It’s going in slightly diverse directions, because we have strictly atonal bands – actually, some of them very interesting; there are bands that try to play, I don’t know… If we called it conventional, that would be a huge exaggeration, but based on convention, with some serious harmonic excesses, ricochets, the devil knows what else – there are so many of these novelties. Some are better at it, some worse. But overall, there are a great many musicians, very good ones, but it’s not clear if all of that will ultimately break through into some distinctive new trend… Although, to my mind, there are certain trends there, because whatever you call it – straight ahead, or regular jazz – they are actually very different from what was played earlier. What very often predominates is a search for innovation, originality, leaving a mark on the market. Sometimes there’s overthinking involved – those Warsaw Autumns etc. – and that’s also commercialism, if truth be told. People often forget what it is they like, and start to speculate. Some try to present themselves as some kind of prophets playing something nobody has before – and then suddenly they calm down… But such efforts to break through are happening all the time. Actually, I’m not at all surprised, because there’s a myriad of musicians out there – making it to the top is bloody difficult. There are certain themes that are very sought-after in Poland. One such madness was playing Chopin and Komeda. So many records were produced that… Let’s say that they probably weren’t that necessary. 

► What do you listen to these days?

Regretfully, I must admit that I mostly only listen to stuff I need for Three Quarters of an Hour of Jazz [radio programme]. Time is running short… I haven’t browsed around new records lately, although I know I have some catching up to do and should get around to it. Also, I miss many of those magnificent… essentially veterans who – for reasons unknown to me – have simply gone silent. 

► Where did your other nickname – “the General of Polish Jazz” – come from? When you type in “Ptaszyn General of Polish Jazz”, the search brings up thousands of websites with this expression, e.g. “The General of Polish Jazz visited such and such a place”, “The General of Polish Jazz will play with his quartet on such and such a date” etc.

That’s news to me…

Recorded live: [tracks 1, 2] on 28 April 2003 at Klub "Perspektywy" in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, [track 3] on 27 April 2003 at Dom Kultury "Chemik" in Kędzierzyn-Koźle, [tracks 4, 5] on 18 October 2020 at the Podlasie Jazz Festival in Biała Podlaska [all locations in Poland].

label: For Tune 2022
nr kat. 0160(097)
format: CD, digipack