MARK LOTZ TRIO: THE WROCLAW SESSIONS

Google translation: MUSIC / RECESSIONLESS Z. K.8 / 2019
Dutch flute expert Mark Alban Lotz is touring the world criss-crossing from Havana to Istanbul, and we would probably miss it if albums on LopLop, Unit, Evil Rabbit or elsewhere would not appear regularly from these detours. The genre can be seen as a lotzian – between jazz, classical, world and free improvisation – with an alternate cast from Alan Purves to Meinrad Kneer.

This time, The Wroclaw Sessions, recorded on March 7, 2018 in the Damnrich studio with a pair of Polish musicians, specifically with bassist Grzegorz Piasecki and drummer Wojciech Buliński, is offers to us. The accompanying text to the album tells us that they did not prepare their nine-track session, but that sometimes may not – and this time it wasn’t – a problem. The choice of composers from Sam Rivers to Charlie Parker to Miriam Makeba is varied, but Lotz’s alto, bass and concert flutes retain the freedom. Of course, the spontaneous exaggeration of their works (including their own compositions) ), and the rhythm sometimes follows, mostly refined and interweaving. Bass bounces themes, adding atmospheric color to the development, drums are ubiquitously playful and dividing, sometimes rattling, the whole trio is in a continuously contacting and deepening movement. While each composition retains its specificity, the basis of the trio’s interplay is always the offering, but uninhibiting understanding, sometimes insignificantly trembling and full of humility (Lullaby for Tymon), sometimes imperviously capricious, and waitfully baitful in its complexity (Pata Pata), at other times, they were very agitated and flashy (Segment) or even unobtrusively crowded and seductive (however, this also has its limits). Whether the theme excites the bass (which, after all, is always willingly salt-free) or is an outrageous drum, it is always (some) flute that unobtrusively unlocks the melody and portrays it without trying to deviate excessively from it. It is simply intimate dynamic. And we can look forward to Lotz’s next predicted return. Where? From anywhere.

by Zdenek Slaby

Uni Kulturni Magazine august 2019,