The Brooklyn Rail

The Norwegian electroacoustic trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær became the artistic director of Kraków’s long-established Jazz Juniors festival in 2024. Next year has it hitting fifty, but this forty-ninth edition served as a fitting preparation for a presumed higher climax in 2026. The heart of the four days is its competition, now situated on the first day, to get all of the youthful tension out of the way. Six acts are selected blindly, without knowledge of origin, lineup, or background circumstances. Their music is the deciding factor. There are winners and losers, but most of the entrants tend to garner either cash prizes or bookings courtesy of partner venues around Europe.

The following two days feature double-bill concerts at the Cricoteka arts venue, an unusual, rusted, hobbyhorse construction that casts its odd shadow over the Vistula River. Molvær has already revealed a taste for matching indigenous Polish artists with visiting Norwegian combos, the latter often displaying electrified tendencies.

On the second evening, the Polish-Norwegian axis moved from the inspirational Kraków piano technician (and abstract creator) Kasia Pietrzko, who matches phenomenal technique with individualist soloing and thematic constructions, aided by her heightened regular partners on the bass on drums, Andrzej Święs and Piotr Budniak, who could each easily be band leaders themselves, in possession of defined, unique powers. Contrastingly, the female Oslo trio of Nothing Personal combined fluffy pop-chorus vocals with jagged, restless electronics, sampling, keyboards, and the odd clarinet, performing behind a diaphanous stage-curtain, which acted as a screen for visual extensions.

The third night again matched the Polish and the Norwegian, with an almost-acoustic duo from trumpeter Piotr Damasiewicz and ECM pianist Dominik Wania, the latter flecking his melodic ‘scapes with subtle effects-dust, the former even subtler, using a pair of microphones, or sometimes stippling under the piano lid. Then, the ubiquitous Norwegian drummer Erland Dahlen set out to deliver the mightiest of drum solos, embellished by small marimbas, silver bells, tambourines, and electronics, continually exploring a near-symphonic range of rhythmic complexity, hard beats, soft Indian and Indonesian ripples, and exultant chiming fantasias.

The final night of the long weekender moved across the city to the Kraków Philharmonic, an old-fashioned concert hall with a grey and gold interior, an Art Deco organ looming over the stage. Soheil Shayesteh has written Perceptual Dialogues, an elaborate composition for the Sinfonietta Cracovia and Molvær. Shayesteh is an Iranian kamancheh soloist currently dwelling in Amsterdam. The kamancheh is a bowed traditional instrument, held upright on the lap, expressively suited to the grainy malleability of glissando. Both he and Molvær share a delight in the electronic laptopiary cloaking of their acoustic cores.

Sinfonietta Cracovia is particularly known for its interpretations of Krzysztof Penderecki’s works, as well as music for films and television, and a key collaboration with Philip Glass. The roots of the group stretch right back to 1994. Strings abounded, conducted by Paulina Porszke in her flowing white suit. Insectoid electronics were prominent from the outset of this world premiere performance, with both Molvær and Shayesteh seated next to their laptops, casting their chitterings running with spatial freedom around a crystalline surround-speaker system. Otherwise, we heard pristine acoustic strings and horn, marrying naked acoustic with a covering fall-out of dusted digital smudges. The bittersweet sustain of the strings unavoidably suggested a spirit-searching character draped by the master, Arvo Pärt, particularly regarding a suspended state that was occasionally broken by sudden violent strafes, quietening down as swiftly as they struck.

Molvær was at his most tender, often fragile in his untreated acoustic state. The Sinfonietta strings bloomed and enveloped, their celestial aura suspended. Shayesteh bowed with a microscopic intimacy, his slippery vibrato phrases sitting alone. A Persian nature is unavoidable in the sound, but elements of soft drone, ambient, and filmic abstraction were also discerned. Molvær gradually began to introduce a frosting of electronics, a glacial grinding, as the strings sang with a morose concern. The interplay was then equal between all involved, darkly spirit-questing, as the extended piece slowly transformed ascendencies.

There was a touch of hesitation, and then an encore confirmed, with an intimate duo between Molvær and Shayesteh, lights dimmed, thoughts transfixed, as the pair revealed an alternative avenue for this material to exist beyond the Sinfonietta, and opened up out of two heads, set for spaciousness, inclined toward a deep-mood spell-casting.