And everything began with a small golden statue of a faun-like Beelzebub, a small sculpture of the purest gold, so finely engraved, so chased, so done up to perfection that it seemed to be the work of some truly beelzebubic Donatello from out of this word or of some Occidentalized Chinaman who spent his whole life forging that one unique thing... from "Peyotl" by Witkacy
TOMASZ STANKO
Witkacy - Peyotl / Freelectronic
Polonia Records CD 037 & 038, Poland, 1994
Audio Playlist:
Tomasz Stanko playlist
Tracks:
PEYOTL Witkacy (1st CD):
1. My W.S. Friend 6'04
2. Witkacy - Wizje cz. I 15'58
3. Witkacy - Wizje cz. II 15'49
4. Hej! 4'52
Freelectronic (2nd CD):
1. Too Pee 03'20
2. Kwa, kwa (Stanko / Skowron) 02'10
3. Sunia 05'29
4. Ha. ha, ha 04'36
5. Gama 03'19
6. Euforila 06'00
7. Freelectronic 03'35
8. Dwaj (Stanko / Skowron) 01'35
9. Shaky Chica 04'03
10. Asmodeus 05'37
Line-up:
Tomasz Stanko - trumpet
Janusz Skowron - synthesizer Yamaha DX7
Antymos Apostolis - guitars, drums and percussion
Vitold Rek - electric and acoustic bass
Zbigniew Brysiak - percussion
Tadeusz Sudnik - synthi...aks
Andrzej "Major" Przybielski - trumpet
Marek Walczewski - voice
Recorded:
PEYOTL Witkacy -April 1984 - November 1986
Freelectronics - April and June 1986 at Remont Jazz Club, Warsaw, Poland
About:
And everything began with a small golden statue of a faun-like Beelzebub, a small sculpture of the purest gold, so finely engraved, so chased, so done up to perfection that it seemed to be the work of some truly beelzebubic Donatello from out of this word or of some Occidentalized Chinaman who spent his whole life forging that one unique thing… (from "Peyotl" by Witkacy)
“Witkacy-Peyotl” album by Tomasz Stanko is inspired by Witkacy’s body of work. Stanko had been fascinated with Witkacy and his life for a long time, he read his works, he valued his paintings, he had even hung Witkacy’s portrait in his own apartment.
Born in 1885 in Warsaw, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), was Polish painter, illustrator, and photographer, playwright and novelist, philosopher, art theoretician, and critic; member of the first-ever Polish group of avant-garde artists known as the Formists, and author of the aesthetic theory of Pure Form. The Theory of Pure Form grew out of Witkacy's perception of art as a metaphysical experience; simultaneously, it constituted a reflection of the writer's philosophical views which were saturated with a sense of catastrophe. Religion, philosophy and metaphysics had been defeated, Witkiewicz believed. It was solely in art, which itself had degenerated as since the Renaissance it had focused on re-creating, that any change was possible, and only on condition that it would be looked upon through the prism of form. Witkacy seemed to say that the purpose of art - the last refuge of individual existence - thus lay in inciting metaphysical feelings, evoking a non-reducible metaphysical sense of the strangeness of existence, rather than in simply replicating everyday life. The artist's final gesture of negation for contemporary reality was his death by suicide, which occurred one day after the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939. (Witkacy’s bio courtesy of culture.pl)
“Jazz is born from a pain. Pain is beautiful. Life has two sides: the light and the darkness. Suffering has always been my greatest inspiration.” (Tomasz Stanko)
There is something wild and untamed in that music, something which is disquieting, which puts us face to face with the suffering within us and at the same time makes us thirst for life - that which is the most real and the same time the most difficult. The sounds of his trumpet tell of unavoidable human loneliness, of the marvelous and mediocrity of human existence. And of a primal lust for life. I would call what happens between Stanko and his audience a psychological resonance - Stanko unerringly matches the free vibration of human souls, leading them down the path of questions about the sense, the cause and objective of it all. A path which stretches all the way to the limits of the listeners; soul. His is a strange music, difficult, strong, full of dramatic tension and anxiety, and at the same time, very lyrical and truly incredibly expressive. (Jazz Forum)
