Latest news with #Wasilewski
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
John Fordham's jazz album of the month
Joe Lovano, that giant American elder of jazz reeds-playing, nowadays seems – rather like the equally eminent saxophone master Charles Lloyd – to be simmering all his decades of timeless tunes and exquisite passing phrases down to essences. The 72-year-old Ohio-born sax star and occasional drummer's partners here are Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski's collectively freethinking trio – Homage's shape was formed on extensive tours with them, and a week in 2023 at New York's Village Vanguard club that acted as an impromptu rehearsal. Song-rooted American jazz-making and give-and-go European free-jazz have become intertwined within Lovano's later-life soundworld. Wasilewski's compatriot Zbigniew Seifert's Love in the Garden is reworked as a rapturous tenor-sax ballad with every soft horn outbreath embraced in silvery keyboard streams. Lovano's Golden Horn evokes the iconic four-note hook of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme before his tenor sax eases in on hints and fragments, then sweeps into fast linear post-bop. There's a driving, McCoy Tyneresque solo from Wasilewski and Lovano switches to hand drums, animatedly joining percussionist Michal Miskiewicz – but there's an exhilarating surprise when the leader whoops back in on the soprano-sax-like Hungarian tárogató. The title track's opening short-burst figures turn to unaccompanied and free-collective jamming before an enchanting percussion coda; Giving Thanks is a kaleidoscope of figures on unaccompanied tenor sax; and This Side – Catville, an album highlight, deftly balances a snappy short-phrase melody and rolling free-groove. The recording session apparently captured five hours of these exchanges, so with luck a second volume of this hearteningly harmonious and spontaneous music-making is already in the pipeline. The unobtrusively challenging American drummer Bill Stewart recorded Live at the Village Vanguard (Criss Cross Jazz) in 2023 with the fine Wayne Shorterish Texan saxophonist Walter Smith III and bassist Larry Grenadier. This is an all-original repertoire of Monkish phrasing, lyrical song forms and stretched blues, played with a relish that confirms the enduring mileage of those materials. The fast imagination and soulfulness of young UK saxist Emma Rawicz scintillatingly partners with the explosive orchestral breadth of piano star Gwilym Simcock on the duo set Big Visit (ACT). There's a quirkier but just as compatible union in Ronny Graupe's Szelest, a trio featuring the fragile and precise Swiss singer Lucia Cadotsch along with innovative German guitarist Graupe and UK pianist/composer Kit Downes. On the album Newfoundland Tristesse (BMC), Cadotsch is alert and inventive as she makes old-school material – even Stardust and I Surrender Dear are included here – converse creatively with sometimes implacably independent partners. It's a set that will grow her status as a jazz-leaning musical one-off.
Jordan Times
23-02-2025
- Science
- Jordan Times
Polish excavations at Huseiniya uncover early Bronze Age artefacts
AMMAN — A Polish archaeological team from Jagiellonian University (JU) excavated in 2021 at Huseiniya, near the Desert Highway. The site is located about 500 metres from the Harrat Juhayra site, which was investigated several years ago by a Japanese team of archaeologists led by Professor Sumio Fujii. The vast site occupied the southern side of a small valley called Wadi Quseir and numerous stone concentrations were scattered throughout, forming small artificial mounds that concealed architectural relics. 'The surface was also marked with scatters of lithics and ceramic objects. While part of the site is directly threatened by the ongoing construction of a gas pipeline, it is mostly under threat of intense looting activity," said Michal Wasilewski. "The site is located on a fluvial terrace, in a flat-bottomed, shallow, and currently dry river bed running from west to east,' said Wasilewski, adding that the valley itself is a part of a larger basin surrounded from the north, west, and east by hills formed, among others, by Pleistocene rocks of volcanic origin. The hydrothermal phenomena associated with volcanic activity resulted in formation of massive local deposits of silicates up to several meters thick. Outcrops of these rocks occur at a short distance to the west of the archaeological site. The most prominent sediments are of a Quaternary age and comprise gravels, sands, and silts of fluvial and aeolian origin. 'During the 2021 excavations, only two archaeological strata were recorded. One was connected with the functioning of the household [described below], and the other, located outside the building, consisted of collapsed mudbrick and stone material and was most likely a result of events occurring after the household went out of use," he said. "Eight radiocarbon dates obtained from the household context date the dwelling's occupation to the end of the 5th millennium BC, with the oldest date within the highest probability range being 4266 cal BC, and the youngest — 3967 cal BC,' Wasilewski explained. Among the investigated structures was a rectangular dug-out building with stone walls, some of them in the form of orthostates, and a stepped entrance giving access to the structure from the south Near the entrance was a two part, internally divided stone installation, which, at least at one point in time, was used as a hearth. The floor level of the building was probably covered with clay plaster. The series of eight radiocarbon dates ranging from 4331 to 3967 cal BC, obtained mainly from charcoal, place the functioning of this homestead in the Late Chalcolithic, Wasilewski said, noting that pottery finds help to date the discovered structure to the EB IA period. 'By far the most important find that helped confirm this chronology is a ledge handle of the 'folded' type, discovered in Locus. Vessels equipped with such handles first appeared at the beginning of EB I and then disappeared about halfway through this period,' Wasilewski underlined. He added that worthy of note is the presence of holemouth jars, which differed from those found on other sites in Wadi Quseir, as they had a more closed shape and arms that sloped less steeply. The site yielded a total of 976 lithic artifacts, 225 of which were found within the intact archaeological context, the archaeologist said, adding that the rest were scattered on the surface and in looters' pits. Flake production, mostly ad hoc, dominated in the inventory. An increase in the share of flakes first occurred at the end of the Neolithic, but it was the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age that witnessed a more noticeable growth in their number. 'The assemblage from the site featured characteristic elements that in some ways relate more clearly to the Chalcolithic or, possibly, to the transitional period between the Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age." "Among the more distinctive tools confirming this chronology were arched-backed blades, regular backed blades sometimes combined with perforators including those made on flat cortical, as well as forms resembling Palaeolithic chopper tools,' Wasilewski highlighted. This site most likely contained settlement units scattered along a small seasonal stream. The environmental conditions in the late 5th millennium BC may have been more favourable than today's arid and hyper arid conditions typical of this area, the scholar concluded. Page 2
