Matthew Smoczynski – Metamorphoses
2025-06-01Zbigniew Seifert – Live in Solothurn
2025-06-01Solo album
"Solo Violin" is a legendary album with history in the background. The 1970s, world-famous jazz violinist Zbigniew Seifert begins to give solo concerts, discovering a hitherto completely unknown form of stage expression for jazz.
In the process of building his repertoire, and struggling with this arch-difficult matter, he learns that he is suffering from cancer. In order to pay his hospital bills, he decides to release a live CD of a solo violin concerto. The album gets excellent reviews, and Seifert himself, a few years after the release of this album, states in an interview with Pavel Brodowski that "it was his best concert."
Undoubtedly, this is one of the greatest achievements of world jazz violin in its entire history. Honest to the point of pain, touching the most sensitive strings, drawing attention to the obvious fact that the time we are given is not infinite. Seifert seems to be saying to listeners, "Here's my solo program, I have cancer, I have no more time left to think and rehearse, listen to what I have."
And it is this truth beating from this recording that is remarkable. Nothing is faked on this album, from the sound, to the editing of the recording and the playing itself. We are communing with the Master as he is at this moment.
Seifert treats us - the listeners - as close friends, to whom certain things do not need to be explained. He plays phenomenally, intensely and with great passion. He skillfully builds tension in the unhurriedly played improvisation in Confessions and Birds as if he wants to enjoy every note. In Kind of Time he uses an "overlay" technique improvising to his recorded accompaniment, and in the album's closing Evening Psalm he gives a display of top-notch jazz virtuosity. The breakneck runs, spectacular two-note runs, and chords all serve to make a deeper statement rather than to show off his own skills. Seifert decided to remove the cheerfully titled pieces from the program and left only the serious ones(Turbulent Plover is loosely translated as "stormy seedling" - as the note inside the CD reads, originally this piece and Pinocchio were to be included in the "Solo Violin" program).
Listening to this album, I wondered what the album would have sounded like if he had more time, if he hadn't gotten sick... Would he have polished the material longer? If so, would the recording have gained or lost? Would a later album have been as serious? Maybe he would have chosen different songs? Or would he have decided not to record it?
I have before me an unsurpassed masterpiece, and I feel unsatisfied... I would like to listen to more Seifert solo albums, but it is impossible.
Author: Krzysztof Lenczowski
Review published in Jazz Forum 12/2017
Track listing:
Confessions
Kind of Time
Birds
Evening Psalm
