'Helikon' Was Also a Favourite of Zbyszek Seifert's. Both His Quartet

man of the light. THE LIFE AND WORK OF ZBIGNIEW SEIFERT The ‘Helikon’ was also a favourite of Zbyszek Seifert’s. Both his quartet and (later) Stańko’s quintet held their rehearsals there, and that’s where he played his first jazz concerts. It was in this club that he met jazz musicians and fans. As its musicians became more and more popular, the Jazz-Club found it could not seat all the audience and so concerts began to be held in other places. Nonetheless, the first steps on the ensemble’s career path were inextricably linked with that magical place. Jazz-Club “Helikon”. From left: barmaid, NN, Jan Jarczyk, Zbigniew Seifert, Jan Gonciarczyk, Adam Matyszkowicz. Archive of Małgorzata Seifert Jazz-Club “Helikon” membership card. Archive of Małgorzata Seifert 36 The music studies and Jazz Ensembles The Career of the Zbigniew Seifert Quartet The Quartet’s official debut took place in November, 1965, during the th14 Cracow Jazz Festival, the so-called Cracow All Souls Jazz Festival at Krzysztofory, where the jam sessions were held. Andrzej Jaroszewski enthusiastically hailed their performance as foreshadowing the coming of a new generation of jazz musicians, the debut of a modern jazz band. In a brochure entitled “Cracow Jazz Festival – 14th Edition”, Krzysztof Sadowski wrote: On Friday evening the second debutant was Zbigniew Seifert, an alto sax player influenced by John Coltrane and Zbigniew Namysłowski. From the latter, he took the pure intonation and confident presentation of frequently complicated melodic phrases. Especially in the theme of McCoy Tyner’s “Three Flowers” the whole ensemble gave us a sample of solid modern jazz. Its members are: Jan Jarczyk (p), Jan Gonciarczyk (b), Janusz Stefański (dr), and Zbigniew Seifert (as). Zbigniew Seifert Quartet. From left: Janusz Stefański, Jan Gonciarczyk, Zbigniew Seifert, Jan Jarczyk. Photo by Jacek Maria Stokłosa After their successful debut, the Quartet was also invited to other Cracow venues. They gave concerts in student clubs (‘Żaczek’, ‘Karlik’), in ‘Klub pod Jaszczurami’, ‘Piwnica pod Baranami’, ‘Klub pod Przewiązką’, and had entry to Jazz-Club ‘Helikon’. More and more frequently, they were also invited to perform in Warsaw, Wrocław, in Silesia. Sometimes they played with other musicians. For instance, in the winter of 1968 the Brazilian Irany d’Olivera Passos came to Cracow to take up studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, and Grzegorz Tusiewicz organised several concerts for her. She sang bossa nova at Cracow’s clubs with Zbigniew Seifert Quartet. 37 man of the light. THE LIFE AND WORK OF ZBIGNIEW SEIFERT Zbigniew Seifert’s sheet music. Archive of Małgorzata Seifert Most of the bands active in Cracow at that time played traditional jazz. Zbigniew Seifert Quartet was one of the flagships of the city’s avant-garde jazz scene. Jan Jarczyk and Jan Gonciarczyk recall: In Cracow, we mostly played in ‘Piwnica pod Baranami’. In Olsztyn we played a concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra. It was said that as a quartet we changed the character of that type of jazz. Unfortunately, we never released Zbigniew Seifert’s sheet music. a record, because none of us approached the Polskie Nagrania [the state Archive of Małgorzata Seifert monopoly record company – translator’s note] with such a suggestion. We knew we still had so much to learn and achieve. We gave performances quite frequently, and toured all over Poland. Our manager was Teresa Poprawa. I can remember playing a jazz quartet concert on Police Day. I do not know how the two were supposed to work together, the communist police and jazz, but the concert was very well received. We liked it and the police liked it, so everyone was satisfied. On one occasion, we also appeared on a TV programme with Andrzej Dąbrow- ski as solo vocalist.1 Zbyszek absorbed himself intensively in jazz music. By himself or with friends from the quartet, he analysed the available jazz mate- rial. He felt that it was possible to achieve a personal style in jazz through one’s own effort. He studied the performances of great masters in order to arrive at his own conception of music-making. John Coltrane remained for him the paragon of jazz playing. 1 Historia krakowskiego jazzu [History of Jazz in Cracow], episode 14, www.radiokrakow.pl. 38 The music studies and Jazz Ensembles Zbigniew Seifert Quartet; from the left: Jan Jarczyk, Janusz Stefański, Jan Gonciarczyk, Zbigniew Seifert. Photo by Jacek Maria Stokłosa The summer of 1966 was a time of intensive work for the ensemble. During the day, Zbyszek and Jan Jarczyk wrote down from recordings Coltrane’s, Charles Lloyd’s and Herbie Hancock’s solos. At night they played with the quartet at the Feniks restaurant, from 9.30 pm until 3 am. As they had no audio equipment, they had to listen to gramophone records at their friends’ homes. From only two or three listenings to a record, they had to learn a whole section of music by heart and write it down on paper. Records and gramophone needles were precious: no one was going to let them listen over and over again to the same piece. With friends, they also listened to Ornette Coleman’s At the Golden Circle recorded during concerts in Stockholm, as well as to Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Roland Kirk. The stars of the Jazz Jamboree festival held in October 1967 were Charles Lloyd (ts) and Roland Kirk (ts, fl). Charles Lloyd was then at the top of the polls of the popular American jazz maga- zine “Down Beat”. His ensemble included the still little known Keith Jarrett (p) and Jack DeJohnette (dr). Zbyszek and his friends listened to the festival concerts with admiration. They stayed at the “Warszawa” Hotel. Nobody knew how many guests there were at the hotel at that time. Illegal “visitors” sneaked past the reception room. Zbyszek and Grzegorz Tusiewicz slept head to tail on the floor in the room of some engineer who also came to the Jazz Jam- boree. Apart from the concerts, more emotions were stirred up by the jam session at the “Stol- ica” café, where Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette swapped instruments and Jarrett played the drums all night, while DeJohnette took over the piano and the bass. Everyone was surprised 39 The Tomasz Stańko Quintet the composer. The gravest omission, in my view, is the lack of any commentary on how this kind of score is to be read and interpreted by the violinist. As we know, a performer must approach a musical text in one way if he or she is intending to read from it fluently and in a quite different way if he or she is intending to learn one of these pieces by heart […] I must admit that Seifert’s flippant attitude to a composer of such stature as Martinů’s offends my sense of decorum. I will not cite individual examples; suffice it to say, there are far too many of them in this thesis. I can only hope that these statements result from lack of experience in writing about music or from stylistic awkwardness rather than from the student’s lack of respect for this highly-regarded composer.”1 Here are a few excerpts from Seifert’s diploma work in which he interprets Martinů’s music: Thus the composer brings out the hidden significance of the extremely simple and seemingly unengaging rhythmic pattern […] One cannot help asking oneself whether this graphic convention is musically justified or whether it is for the reader a delib- erately introduced, contrived obstacle. And, again: It must be noted that the composer consciously, for purely formal reasons, introduced a form of notation that makes score read- ing more difficult […]. Étude No. 6 bears the subheading ‘In Jazz Rhythm’. This calls for some elucidation. What is a ‘jazz rhythm’? The phrase apparently says everything, but at the same time it tells us very little […]. I do not believe that the very fact of his adding this subheading means the composer must have had a specific manner of performance in mind. If that were the case, it would not make much sense. Cracow State Higher School of Music, MMus diploma. Archive of Małgorzata Seifert A list of compositions performed by Zbigniew Seifert during his studies. Archive of the Academy of Music, Cracow. 1 Documents from the archive of the Academy of Music in Cracow. 65 man of the light. THE LIFE AND WORK OF ZBIGNIEW SEIFERT On 10th June 1970 Zbigniew Seifert was awarded the degree of magister sztuki (equivalent of an MMus or an MA in music) from the State Higher School of Music in Cracow. Even though he attained the top marks for his diploma recitals, the weaker marks earned for his other course subjects meant that he could not be awarded a degree with honours. For several months thereafter his violin lay untouched in the cupboard while Seifert was per- forming in Stańko’s quintet, where he played saxophone exclusively. The title page and another page from Zbigniew Seifert’s diploma thesis entitled The Metro-Rhythmic Problems and Related Performance Aspects of Selected Compositions for Violin and Piano by Boguslav Martinů, from the archive of the Academy of Music in Cracow Archive of Agnieszka Seifert 66 man of the light. THE LIFE AND WORK OF ZBIGNIEW SEIFERT boast that I foresaw this development in my commentary published after the ‘Jazz on the Oder ‘68’), while Bronisław Suchanek is the great hope of Polish jazz.1 The concert at the Jazz Jamboree’70 was Zbigniew Seifert Quartet’s last official appearance. As the concert schedule of Stańko’s quintet grew progressively busier, Zbigniew Seifert had no time for fre- quent trips to Cracow to attend rehearsals of his own ensemble.

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