Michael Bates’ Acrobat / Lutosławski Quartet “Metamorphoses: Variations on Lutosławski”

Anaklasis, 2023

Release date: June, 2023

NASZA RECENZJA DOSTĘPNA JEST RÓWNIEŻ W JĘZYKU POLSKIM

Based in Cracow (Poland) label Anaklasis – run by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne – continues its Revisions series with another unusual release and original performance. This time, the artists have been inspired by the compositions of Witold Lutosławski, one of the most outstanding Polish composers of the 20th century.

Michael Bates was invited to tackle Lutosławski’s work. A Canadian double bassist and composer who has lived in New York for over 20 years. An artist who boldly breaks through genre barriers and patterns. The Bates-led chamber ensemble Acrobat (with an unusual instrumental combination: violin, clarinet, bassoon, bass, percussion) already has in its discography an album of radical arrangements of works by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Accompanying the Bates quintet on their artistic journey was the Lutosławski Quartet – Polish string quartet resident at Wrocław’s NFM. The ensemble focuses on works of the 20th and 21st centuries, with particular emphasis on the oeuvre of domestic composers.  It often collaborates with outstanding performers representing various musical styles.  Their achievements include joint concerts with Charles Lloyd or Uri Caine.

Michael Bates heard the Lutoslawski Quartet for the first time at the Jazztopad festival in the autumn of 2021. Already a year later, the New York edition of Jazztopad featured the concert premiere of Lutosławski’s works arranged by Bates in a bravura performance by the combined forces of his quintet and the Lutosławski Quartet. The musicians met again in 2022 to record the programme for this release. The circle was closed with the world premiere of the album at New York’s Lincoln Center, presented on 28^th of  June 2023.

 The album features variations on seven compositions by Witold Lutosławski and one piece by the project’s leader. Almost an hour of music perfectly captures the spirit of Witold Lutosławski’s oeuvre. As Bates himself mentions, the musicians here particularly wanted to emphasise his combination of compositional and improvisatory approaches to music. 

The hour-long album is an excellent example – let’s give the publisher the floor here – of music that escapes pigeonholing. The energy of the ‘Wind Trio’, the mysterious mood of ‘The Sea’, in which one can hear the voice of Anna Lobedan, and the delicacy and spaciousness of ‘Bucolic for WL’ build a picture of a contemporary 21st-century reading of Lutosławski. And the whole is fantastically rounded off by the capital consonance of both ensembles. The artistic fusion and synergy here are downright perfect.

Album is avaiable on Publisher’s web site