With a nearly two decades separating Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s ECM debut, Balladyna, and Matka Joanna, his label follow-up as leader, it’s no wonder the two are so different. Taking Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film Matka Joanna od Aniołów as its inspiration, the second draws from a palette of possession and temptation as grittily as its namesake’s B&W canvas.
Backed by pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer Tony Oxley (in a decidedly Christensenian mode), Stanko brings his pungent lyricism to bear across a swath of mountains and shadows that inhales cobwebs from a “Monastery In The Dark” and exhales the mummified sermons of its “Klostergeist.” Within those lungs mingle forgotten bells, vibrating between prayer and dreams, and chains of latent virtues…
The cult figure Moondog, who performed on the streets of New York for over 30 years, meshed jazz, classical, Native American rhythms and poetry. With a lifelong fascination for the strict rules of canon-writing, and dubbed the father of minimalism, he composed more than eighty symphonies, three hundred rounds, countless percussion, organ and piano pieces, scores for brass bands and string orchestras, and five books called The Art of the Canon. Joanna MacGregor's stunning new arrangements of fourteen of Moondog's most famous pieces are re-imaginings for larger forces, with a spectacular line-up of some of today's most cutting-edge jazz musicians, along with the brilliant Britten Sinfonia. Radically rewritten, each track retains Moondog's irresistible trademarks - short and snappy, of the street, melodic and joyful, and characterized by a pounding beat.