Seifert

In the minds of most jazz lovers Zbigniew Seifert lives on chiefly as a violin virtuoso. Little attention is paid to his compositions, which define the characteristic "Seifert" style of his music as much as his masterly playing does.

We decided to revisit the master's pieces, originally meant to be played by a jazz combo. They have been filtered through the musical language of a jazz string quartet, which seems close to the values the composer held. Both in Seifert's way of playing and in his compositions one can see how important it was to him to bring elements characteristic of jazz onto the ground of a classical performing apparatus.

For a listener familiar with the original versions, these interpretations may come as a surprise. We tried to approach the compositions creatively: on the one hand there are pieces which, like jazz standards, are merely a pretext for improvisation; on the other, extended compositions with a narrative carefully planned by the composer, which gains an entirely different context through the change of performing forces.

The idea of recording this album had been maturing in us for a long time, but the direct impulse was the concert we played at the 9th Summer Jazz Academy festival at the Wytwórnia club in Łódź, in August 2016. For that occasion we prepared a special programme devoted entirely to Seifert's music.

SEIFERT is Atom String Quartet's fourth album, its third studio album, its second recorded at the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice — and its first monographic album, devoted to the work of a single composer.