At first glance, “avant garde” Free Jazz and Eastern European traditional music would seem to have little to do with one another—they would seem indeed to be situated at or near opposite ends of whatever sort of musical and/or sociocultural spectrum one might wish to call into play here.

Thus, the idea of trying to combine these two modes of musical expression, of weaving them together at least pro tem into a single mode of expression might therefore seem a rather doubtful one, if not altogether dubious. What conceivable meeting ground, what zone of even partial commonality could serve as a basis for any sort of constructive commingling of these two radically divergent approaches?

Moreover, even if you could identify a viable meeting ground between the two, there would still linger the question whether or not anything really aesthetically worthwhile could actually be extracted from their amalgamation.

As it happens, there does exist a definite meeting ground between Jazz in general and Eastern European traditional music: Both have their roots, after all, in oral culture—in what the theorist Walter Ong referred to as orality. And both therefore make use, in however differing ways and in differing degrees, of what the Homeric scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord referred to as the “oral-formulaic” method of constructing artistic expression [x].

The “oral-formulaic” method most of all entails improvisation—it is in fact a means by which to improvise in the immediate moment within the context of a specific established framework or idiom of cultural expression.

The song culture upon which much Ukrainian traditional music is grounded does not allow for a very large amount of improvisation, as I understand it, but there are moments within certain contexts in which this is encouraged, to a limited degree. This can only be done properly within that particular idiom, however, on the basis of a deep knowledge of the culture itself, of the ways and means by which it functions [p].

Improvisation in Jazz, on the other hand, is absolutely paramount. There are many aspects—particularly involving structural components—which in most traditional forms of Jazz are not subject to much improvisation, but there are also substantial areas in Jazz which not only demand improvisation, but represent those crucial junctures in which improvisation comprises the whole point and purpose, the raison d'être of the genre in the first place.

And in some forms of Jazz, notably what is known as Free Jazz, nearly all traditional structural components are in principle stripped away, so as to render a state of affairs in which every single element of expression must in fact be improvised.

Yet even for the larger proportion of Free Jazz, except perhaps for those varieties that engage in sheer expressive noise, music making is not entirely free of expressive conventions—for indeed, improvisation in Free Jazz, as in most other types of Jazz music, tends to be enacted by way of the “oral-formulaic” method [t].

How this method operates is through the use of formulae—what might be called “expressive fragments”, most often relatively small, discrete pieces of musical expression that are drawn from a sort of accumulated “library” that any practitioner of a particular idiom must learn in order to practice the idiom in an effective manner. Yet the manner by which such formulae are pieced together so as to create an ongoing flow of expression is not anything pre-determined, pre-structured, or as it would best be put, pre-composed, but must be composed in-the-moment, on-the-spot—must in short, be improvised.

And what is actually the most “free” thing about Free Jazz, when all is said and done, is not so much whatever tendencies it might have towards expressive noise—although this too can have its efficacy—but that its abandonment of virtually all larger structural components thereby opens up the forum within which music making takes place to pure dialogic construction—to creating an entirely free, open, unencumbered conversation between its music makers [x].

And thus, in this absolute heightening of the dialogic character already implicit in Jazz's improvisatory basis, Free Jazz can be seen as bringing to an apotheosis—to a state of peak development—the natural relationship that Jazz already has with oral culture, with orality.

The relationship that Jazz has to orality is for the most part very complex and rarified, though: It is indeed one of the unique characteristic of Jazz that it is what essentially amounts to a classical form, an art music, that unlike pretty much every other classical form in “the West” at least, makes use of a preponderant degree of oral culture methods to construct its art.

Ukrainian traditional music's relationship to orality is much simpler: It is a form of expression than took shape originally as an oral-based art, passed on from one practitioner to the next, from one generation to the next, through oral means. And though it has many components that tend to be relatively set in place, pre-established (although even here, its fundamental oral-based character allows for much variation from one community, and one historical era, to another), it not infrequently encourages, again, a certain degree of improvisation, too.

Hence, there is as it turns out, a real “meeting ground” in which Free Jazz and Ukrainian traditional music might viably come together, whatever their very significant differences.

Once more though, this doesn't mean that actually bringing the two together will necessarily result in anything aesthetically worthwhile. The very possibility of such an encounter between these two disparate approaches does strikes me as inherently intriguing, to be sure, yet the difficulties and complications involved seem at the same time so daunting, that before I listened to the video embedded above, I would have presumed the success of any such attempt to be exceedingly improbable.

Without a doubt, though, what the four musicians at work in the video above do is a success.

Among other things, what can be heard in this video represents a real convening of exceptional Eastern and Central European musical talent. A Lithuanian, the soprano saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas, and a German, the percussionist Klaus Kugel, are joined by two Lviv-based Ukrainians, the contrabassist Mark Tokar and the vocalist Ulyana Horbachevska [c]. Significantly, the performance itself—which was recorded, and has been released in its entirety as a CD—actually occurred in a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, St. Lazar, in Lviv back in 2012.

And a real conversation between these musicians does certainly take place, too. Tokar, Kugel and Vyšniauskas are all Jazz musicians of the first caliber: Not simply in evincing world-class proficiency on their respective instruments, but even more so in their core artistic disposition, what amounts to a fervent experimental and exploratory character that each of these musicians persistently manifests—qualities without which no Jazz musician can really be taken all that seriously as an artist.

Yet the sort of Jazz they are engaged in here is something a bit different than—even if ultimately rooted in—the classic Jazz of the African-American masters of the past. Trying to compete head-on with such figures as Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc., within the context of their own idiom, is after all rather like trying to compete head-on with say, Shakespeare or Picasso within the context of their own idiom (in other words, as we sardonic Americans are apt to say, good luck with that). What these superlative Europeans artists are endeavoring here, instead, is a compelling elaboration of aspects of classic Jazz interwoven into a European sensibility, with deep-seated European referents [v].

Horbachevska, on other hand, although she at times very persuasively entwines Jazz inflections into her vocal art, is no Jazz musician. What she does is in many respects so unique that I have in fact felt the need to devise a new name for it (although it is a designation that I give more broadly to a small group of her fellow Ukrainian artists as well): “Avant Traditionalist”.

What I mean by this is an artist who adopts avant garde mechanisms as a way of opening up new pathways into traditional culture. This is something distinct from an avant gardist who simply incorporates elements of traditional culture into their art, carrying such elements into their own domain: An “Avant Traditionalist” artist operates instead on the same ground as a Traditional artist, so to speak; she simply uses “avant garde” means as a way by which to travel there.

And what this allows Horbachevksa to do in the context of the superb “avant garde” Jazz piece above—and what I think finally makes this piece such a stunning success—is to embody the language of Ukrainian traditional vocal music so thoroughly, with such deep knowledge of its culture (in a way that I don't think would be quite available to an avant garde artist who is merely making occasional use of traditional music elements), such that she is able to then employ this language in a dialogue with her fellow musicians.

In other words, what I think Horbachevska has actually done here is to render the whole language of Ukrainian traditional vocal music (or at least the large portion she has mastery over) into potential formulae —into “expressive fragments” of the sort utilized in the oral-formulaic method—and then puts them to use as elements by which to converse with these three European Jazz masters. True, the longer melodic lines she introduces into the mix here are not quite of a “fragmentary” nature, but she is all the same interlacing these into a larger improvised dialogue with the others, operating in this way unmistakably I think in accordance with the oral-formulaic method.

And the conversation these four carry on is very much in the manner of all great artistic dialogues: in turn rousing, poignant, riveting, inspirational, dismaying, at times even confounding and bewildering.

I am particularly impressed by the sophisticated discourse that Klaus Kugel sets forth on the enhanced drumkit he wields, encompassing gongs, chimes, a large variety of cymbals, etc. Although capable of erupting in tumultuous percussive explosions at the drop of a hat—or rather, in immediate conversational response to his interlocutors—such that would make even Elvin Jones proud, he spends a fair amount of his time during this particular musical event as a sort of “painter” who just happens to be using a drumkit as his “palette”. All the different “colors” he is able to extract from his kit—at certain points using a violin bow on the edges of various cymbals to create an exceedingly piercing and eerie tone—are truly remarkable.

It is really Mark Tokar, then, who lays down much of this music's foundation, emitting a continuous, almost preternaturally responsive swirl of sound—at one moment booming and stentorian, matching each rhetorical point made by his fellow artists with ferocious avidity, then dipping down straightaway with his bow so as to backup his own deep-toned vocalizations, invoking in this way the irreproachable profundities of monophonic Christian chant.

Petras Vyšniauskas actually takes on the role of lead voice to an extent almost more than Horbachevska at a significant number of critical moments. His agile “voice” soars thunderously up and down throughout the piece without any discernible obstruction, following to its logical conclusion every storm of thematic inspiration, occasionally even abruptly veering off into a sort of funky “Freedom Jazz Dance”-type jauntiness, only to drop back just as suddenly into a well-nigh contemplative, even philosophic regard.

Yet in the end, all three of these world-class European Jazz masters consistently, with very fine artistic wisdom, yield center stage to Ulyana Horbachevska, implicitly asserting thereby that she is an artist at the very least on the same level as themselves. For what she does here—proceeding with impeccable creative aplomb throughout nearly the entire “library” of traditional Ukrainian vocal music, touching at least briefly upon virtually all of its potentialities, for bottomless sorrow and desolation, for irrepressible joy and elation, and upon a considerable swath of the nuanced complexities in between—is quite extraordinary indeed.

What I wish to proceed with next, then, is a “close reading” of this piece as a whole, such that can illustrate all of which was just touched on, but now in the more concrete terms of specific musical expression. In other words, what I aim to do is to demonstrate in fairly precise terms how the characterizations given above with reference to these four world-class musical artists, are actually directly manifested in their collective performance here.

And what I want to bring attention to most of all is the musical interaction, the “conversational interplay” as it might be called, that occurs between these four. For again, it is exactly this manner of intense improvised dialogue which goes to the heart of what makes this performance such an extraordinary event—not just in Ukrainian music, I would argue, but in Eastern European, and in European music as a whole. It is indeed, an extraordinary event in world music itself...





TO BE CONTINUED...




ENDNOTES:



[x] Perhaps the utilization of the terms “oral-formulaic” and “orality” here may seem odd, in that what is being discussed is not literature, nor linguistic expression in general (apart from any incorporation of lyrics)—a phenomenon which encompasses a definite distinction between “oral” and “written”—but musical expression, which is presumably something else altogether. Perhaps it would have been better, then, to just use the term “formulaic” rather than “oral-formulaic” (this is actually what Barry Kernfeld does, the Jazz writer who, as I note in Footnote#t below, introduced me to this manner of understanding Jazz), and to replace “orality” with “aurality”.

Yet it should be realized that, just as with linguistic expression, musical expression likewise encompasses much this same distinction between a “written”-based culture—in which musical communication between musicians is endeavored primarily through written form—and a culture which communicates amongst itself primarily through “oral” means—in the sense at least of a communicative mode involving face-to-face, immediate communicative interaction, whether through “oral”, or “aural” devices, or both.

And it is thus this contrast between these two distinct cultural forms that I really wish to convey here by my use of the first set of terms: It is the contrast, that is to say, between two entirely distinct modes of communication, the “oral” and the “written”, which moreover correspond with two entirely distinct modes of culture itself (and culture, after all, is wholly based on communication)—a distinction which is, in point of fact, manifest in musical expression just as much as it is in linguistic expression.

For what is at work here is a larger set of cultural factors that differentiate a communicative mode characterized by distance—which is precisely what a “written” mode allows for—and a communicative mode characterized by immediacy—which is what the face-to-face mode I am referring to here as “oral” intrinsically imposes.

A musical culture centered around a “written” communicative mode is of course best exemplified in “the West” by Classical music, just as a musical culture centered around an “oral” communicative mode (or if one likes, aural) is best exemplified by Traditional music.

And the remarkable thing about Jazz as an Art form, as I state in the text above, is that it manages somehow to combine together significant aspects of the communicative immediacy—what I refer to as “dialogic immediacy”—that pertains to a Traditional form of music making, with significant aspects of the manner of communicative distancing—what I refer to as “dialogic distancing”—that pertains to a Classical form.

[p] “Traditional music is improvisational. Everyone playing the same melody plays his own version...since all learn not from music [i.e., “written music”], but from hearing each and every one, they copy a melody in their own way” (from https://biggggidea.com/project/litnya-shkola-traditsijno-muziki/; translated from the Ukrainian by Google Translate, 08/14/18).

The point is therefore, I think, that the melody itself is given, pre-established, but the manner in which the melody is articulated allows room for improvisation—although each individual's “take” on the melody, if it is to remain properly traditional, must of course match up pretty closely with everyone else's. And this can only occur if such “improvisations” conform to a relatively well-defined traditionalist framework. What such “improvisations” thus draw from are precisely the established formulae that make up that framework.

[t] I first came across a detailed examination of this notion that “Jazz [improvisation] tends to be enacted by way of the 'oral-formulaic' method” in Barry Kernfeld's excellent What to Listen For in Jazz, especially with regard to his superb analysis of Charlie Parker's improvisational art (p. 138). Surprisingly however, this idea has not been explored at length very much elsewhere, as far as I am aware, even though Marshall McLuhan —who was much influenced by Parry and Lord's work, and who also happened to be one of Walter Ong's teachers—posited briefly in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man that “the jazz musician uses all the techniques of oral poetry” (p. 2), expressly with reference to Parry and Lord's theory.

Regardless, it is an idea that in my opinion, does definitely possess a great deal of elucidative cogency. And I do find one full-length book, Kenneth LeRoi Ware's The Parry-Lord Oral Formulaic Theory Applied to the Afro-American Jazz Tradition, exclusively devoted to the idea, although I have not yet had the chance to read this.

It should be noted, though, that Kernfeld identifies in his book two other improvisational approaches that are also common in Jazz, although he acknowledges that all three are very often combined together in various ways:

“Modal improvisation” is one of these other approaches, yet Kernfeld asserts that the form that this takes in Jazz is different from the “modal” approach that is common in “ethnic” music (and I would add here that the approach found in “ethnic” music is roughly consonant, I think, with how modes are often used in Rock and other popular music genres—the improvisations of the late guitarist Michael Bloomfield on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's “East West” (and Elvin Bishop on the same track also made contributions here, although it is clear that Bishop was taking his lead from Bloomfield), more or less adapted from an “ethnic” approach, having served as really the primary model for this line of endeavor. For what it's worth, Psychedelic Rock guitar, as well as the whole Jam Band phenomenon in Rock, pretty much both begin with what Bloomfield does in this piece—a piece recorded in 1966, albeit first taken shape in the final months of the previous year).

In “modal improvisation” as it tends to occur in Jazz, according to Kernfeld, the actual “modal” quality has more to do with the harmonic accompaniment—which generally is along the lines of a “slow moving, weakly functional harmony”—that then serves as a sort of bedrock foundation upon which a very “flexible and unsystematic” improvisational approach can be readily constructed, one in which “chromatic elements” are very freely and frequently intermixed with “modal elements”. Hence, it is really the diminishment of strictly patterned, complex harmonic structures—which is to say, the radical reduction of harmonic structures to a few “slow moving” elements—that is the primary raison d'être of this approach in Jazz. As Kernfeld notes, John Coltrane's modal explorations from the early 1960s stand as the unquestioned exemplar of this approach.

Then there is of course motivic development—concisely defined on a Columbia University site as “[t]he use of a few short fragments or elements of melody in developing a solo”. The operative point here is that such “melodic fragments” are subjected to various types of development, whereas in a oral-formalaic approach, such “short fragments” tend not to be developed at length very much, but rather situated one after another, combined together in such a way that constructs some sort of progressive or “narrative” coherence, not infrequently—especially in Free Jazz—in close coordination with other musicians (it should be stipulated here, though, that one can find many instances in both musical expression and oral literature, in which an oral formulaic approach is combined with a motivic development approach, such that formulae serve as the basis for such development. The two approaches are easily enough intermixed, in other words).

As Kernfeld delineates in his discussion of Sonny Rollins' solo on “St. Thomas” (p. 144), motivic development is quite difficult to maintain for very long in most traditional forms of Jazz, in which fairly complex—which is to say, “fast-moving”—harmonic structures predominate, for the simple reason that the improviser has to continuously change up the musical materials he or she is utilizing so as to conform to the quickly shifting harmonic patterns. There is thus little time or space available for extensive motivic development (as Kernfeld relates, the exception to this general rule that Rollins' “St. Thomas” solo manages to achieve, with its extensive motivic development over a relatively fast-moving harmonic background, is what makes his improvisation on this piece so remarkable).

Because Free Jazz generally involves the wholesale abandonment of such harmonic structures, this means that motivic development becomes much more readily possible—indeed, the field is in some respects opened up entirely to this approach. The prevalence of a motivic development approach in Free Jazz improvisation is as a consequence quite high.

I would argue, however, that even given the definite tendency towards extensive motivic development in most instances of Free Jazz, such motivic development in many instances of Free Jazz still tends to be incorporated into a larger expressive environment in which an oral-formulaic approach overall prevails (although this of course varies quite a bit throughout the many different varieties of Free Jazz). And this is so precisely because it is easier to “have a conversation”, to engage in a musical dialogue, while utilizing an oral-formulaic approach, then it is utilizing a motivic development approach: While the latter approach tends to lead towards individuated modes of expression—i.e., a single improviser pursuing a particular line of development—the former approach much more readily encourages conversational interaction.

This by and large is I think definitely the case with Ultramarine: i.e., a larger context of “dialogic interaction” utilizing the oral-formulaic approach prevails, although there are at the same time certainly some elements of the motivic development approach—or at least moments approaching this—that are also in play.

I will go into this sort of in-depth analysis much more in the “close reading” section of the text above, but it seems worthwhile to put forth a few comments regarding this here, too:

It's important first of all to keep in mind that these two approaches again, intermix quite easily and on a customary basis, such that the dividing line between the two is often not so clear. Given that though, it does seems to me that much of the larger part of what for example Petras Vyšniauskas, one of the two “lead voices” in the piece, does on the soprano sax fits broadly speaking into the “oral formulaic” approach. That is to say, he most often makes use of relatively smaller-scale musical ideas, motifs, concepts, etc. that are not developed to any real extensive degree, but are instead utilized primarily as means by which to engage his fellow musicians in “conversational interplay”, making use while doing so of the oral-formulaic approach. One hears him doing this most frequently with Klaus Kugel in this piece, but at various times also with Tokar and Horbachevska.

Nonetheless, there are also brief moments in his playing that might definitely be characterized as “motivic development”. The first of which comes at 18:02, and continues almost a full minute, culminating in what sounds to me like an allusion to Eddie Harris' composition “Freedom Jazz Dance”. By about 18:51, however, it's fairly clear Vyšniauskas has moved into a different approach, one in which he's utilizing relatively small fragments as a means by which to “dialogue” with Kugel on the drums.

Again, at about 28:44, Vyšniauskas initiates another section that could be interpreted as motivic development perhaps, although I would more likely characterize it as simply a repetitive ostinato pattern. However, as this pattern continues, he does begin to briefly treat this pattern in such a way that sounds as if he's subjecting it to motivic development, yet he then shifts just as quickly to make use of this as a sort of contrasting counterpoint to what Ulyana Horbachevska begins doing—in effect engaging thereby in a dialogic approach.

Interestingly, although what Horbachevska does throughout the larger part of the piece is to weave relatively long melodic strands in and around what her fellow musicians are doing—which as I laid it out in the text above, does I think essentially conform to an oral-formulaic approach—there is one passage in which she clearly switches over to a more motivic development approach, perhaps in imitation of Vyšniauskas.

This begins sometime around 19:59, although at first she seems to move back and forth from this approach to her more customary “melodic strand” one, eventually going back entirely to this latter approach for a few minutes, until at about 23:11 she then shifts all of a sudden back to what is unmistakably an unmediated motivic development approach. This then culminates in the seconds leading up to 23:33 to her treating a single word essentially as a motif, which she subjects to various rhythmic and melodic-ornamental variations.

And at the exact moment that Horbachevska brings this passage to a close, Mark Tokar begins his own motivic development passage, pretty much in response to what Horbachevska has just done, it would seem. This only lasts about six seconds, however, at which point Tokar then goes back to a more supporting role behind what Vyšniauskas starts to do. Yet this role is one in which Tokar maintains an extremely close—as I put it in the text above, nearly preternatural in its intensity—dialogic interaction with both Vyšniauskas and Kugel, in such a way that again signifies what I believe is an oral-formalaic approach (this passage incidentally features Vyšniauskas at his most intense, too, actually becoming out-and-out red-faced before its over).

It's also interesting to consider that the brief “drum solo” section that Klaus Kugel begins about 32:26, lasting just about exactly 3 minutes to 35:26, essentially amounts to a motivic development passage, albeit one perhaps intermixed with some oral-formulaic elements. Although those not acclimated to the Jazz world might find it odd to consider a drum solo to involve anything on the order of “ideas”, “motifs” or “concepts”, much less their “development”, it has long been customary within the Jazz world to consider that what a Jazz drummer does in a solo is indeed to put forward “ideas”—which is to say, coherent rhythmic patterns—that are then typically subjected to development in various ways, and this is clearly what Kugel is doing here.

What Kugel is doing in most of the rest of the piece, however, is I think either to help establish a sort of ambient sonic environment for the music making overall, or else to engage in close dialogic interaction with his fellow musicians that again, more or less corresponds to an oral formulaic approach (at times these two approaches overlap as well).

Then at the very moment that Kugel's “drum solo” passage ends, Vyšniauskas begins an extended passage in which he plays quite long melodic lines, essentially improvising a whole melodic composition in a free manner. Although this contains some moments close to a motivic development approach, most of it is actually closer to the “melodic strain” approach Horbachevska is using, except that what Horbachevska does is much less “free”, keeping much closer to pre-established materials, even if she is utilizing these in an oral-formulaic manner.

In that respect, then, the “free” aspect of what Vyšniauskas is doing here would actually seem more closely related to the form of Jazz “modal improvisation” described above, except for the fact that the “modal improvisation” approach by definition does not actually pertain to Free Jazz.

That is to say, if following Kernfeld we are to understand a Jazz “modal improvisation” approach as having to do primarily with harmonic matters—or rather, with the manner in which an improviser is able to use the “slow moving” and “weak functionality” characteristic of “modal” harmonic movement as a basis for very “flexible and unsystematic” improvisations—this does not really have any application in a Free Jazz context, simply in that such a context does not really employ “harmonic movement”, at least not in any way that relates to how “harmony” has been traditionally comprehended. Ultimately, then, what Vyšniauskas does here is analogous to the way that Horbachevska's “melodic strand” method accords to an oral formulaic approach.

In any event, although some may find certain specific aspects of my interpretations in this long “mini-essay” I have just endeavored (I will probably weave most of this material into the “close reading” section of the main text in the coming days, by the way) to be arguable in one way or another, I believe the overall interpretive scheme I have adopted here—borrowed from Barry Kernfeld—to be a valuable one, precisely in that it helps to focus very precise attention on exactly the sort of heightened dialogic interactivity (as well as the brief departures from this) that Jazz music excels in more than any other mode of music making.

[x] It's true enough, I should make clear, that this “free” characteristic at the heart of Free Jazz is very often (albeit not always) also embodied through the genre's tendencies towards (the very Expressionistic aesthetic of) “expressive noise”, as well as through the unrelenting and all-pervading exploratory quality that is inherent in virtually everything the genre does (and this latter quality might be asserted to be the primary reason underlying Free Jazz's characteristic rejection of all conventional harmonic, scalar, metrical standards, etc.). However, I would argue that an instance of music making could possess both of these aspects and, however “free” it might be, would still not quite be Free Jazz, if it is lacking in this “dialogic” aspect. It is really this “dialogic” aspect, that is to say—what might be called a privileging of intense dialogic immediacy (a defining characteristic present in virtually all Jazz, once more, but that reaches an apotheosis in Free Jazz)—that ultimately most of all defines such music as Free Jazz, although it definitely tends to do so in conjunction with the other two characteristics just noted, too.

[c] To give some account of the career trajectory of each of these figures up to this point:

Petras Vyšniauskas has been touted as “one of the leading lights of the Lithuanian jazz scene”, and even as “the second central figure in Lithuanian jazz”. An instructor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, he has enjoyed a multi-decade career as a performer, as well as composer for theatre and film. Among the things he is best known for are his collaborations with Veronika Povilioniené, the “grand dame of Lithuanian folk music”, as well as his work with Vyacheslav Ganelin—the musician whom the website quoted above would consider “the first central figure in Lithuanian jazz”—in the Ganelin Trio Priority (the latter also features Klaus Kugel. See footnote #v below).

Among other things, Mark Tokar is quite likely the premier Jazz doublebassist in Ukraine, and without question is one of the leaders of the country's small but dynamic experimental music scene. Some of the more prominent international musical artists Tokar has worked with include the British guitarist Fred Frith and the American saxophonist Ken Vandermark (this Vandermark Trio recording just hypertexted also includes Klaus Kugel). Here is a fairly recent, and quite sizzling performance of his own Trio, which also features his vocals, as well an interesting short film in which he plays a duet with some other cat who, strangely enough, looks exactly like him.

Klaus Kugel has behind him a thirty year career as one of Europe's most accomplished drummers, consistently involved in some of the most adventurous and exploratory endeavors that have taken place within the ambit of the Continental Jazz scene. As just noted, he is the third member of the Ganelin Trio Priority along with Vyšniauskas and Ganelin himself, and is also currently working with Tokar in a Trio with Ken Vandermark. One of Kugel's more notable engagements was a 2008 European tour with the late trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr. Here is an exceedingly hot performance in Vilnius from that tour. Another very interesting ongoing project Kugel takes part in is with the Polish musician Waclaw Zimpel (and at times joined by the German vocalist Ute Kaiser), in which the Medieval sacred music of Hildegard of Bingen is utilized as the basis for contemporary improvisational music. Two examples of what this sounds like are here and here.

Ulyana Horbachevska was a core member of Maisternia Pisni, one of the three female vocalist/performers who comprised this seminal Ukrainian ensemble, which flourished from 2002 or thereabouts to 2011. Since that time, Horbachevska has established herself as a compelling solo artist in her own right who has taken part in, and in many instances herself initiated, some of the most exceptional musical projects that have graced the Ukrainian music making world in recent years. The Ultramarine project under discussion here is certainly one example of that; two others that might be mentioned are the outstanding stage production, “Antonych at Home”, that she performed in alongside Mark Tokar and the writer Yuriy Andrukhovych, and the very moving symphonic memorial to Vasyl Slipak, the Ukrainian Opera singer who was killed in the Donbas War in 2016, that she help put together with the composer Mariya Oliynyk.

[v] This thought is echoed in the following text, which concerns not the Ultramarine project, but rather the Lithuanian-based Ganelin Trio, which both Petras Vyšniauskas and Klaus Kugel take part in:

“...Ganelin, Vyšniauskas and Kugel are more than just plain avant-gardists that break up all connections behind them just to pay tribute to some future aesthetic. They make use of the method of American jazz in order to listen deeply into the European musical tradition” (from http://www.ganelintrio.com/styled-8/index.html).

The Ganelin Trio, led by the keyboardist Vyacheslav Ganelin, actually has a very storied history that is worth taking note of here. Formed way back circa 1968 or 1971 (as is not infrequently the case, my research presents me conflicting dates on this) in Soviet-era Lithuania, long before either Vyšniauskas or Kugel were involved, this ensemble is generally credited with being the “first avant-garde jazz ensemble in the Soviet Union” [translated from the German by Google Translate, 08/13/18].

What amounted to more or less the original formation of the Trio came to an end in 1987, as Vyacheslav Ganelin immigrated to Israel, but Ganelin then brought the ensemble back into being thereabouts the mid-1990s, or perhaps 1999 (here again some conflict regarding dates)—albeit now under the new name of the Ganelin Trio Priority, and now with both Vyšniauskas and Kugel at the helm. This would seem to be a still-active project too, even if only upon occasion: There is a upcoming concert date listed on the Ganelin Trio website for September 2019 in Prague.

Here is a quite remarkable live performance by the Ganelin Trio Priority in Vilnius from 2005 (this performance, nearly an hour and a half long in its YouTube version, has also been released as a DVD, Live at The Lithuanian National Philharmony Vilnius).

Although there are any number of things that might be said about this 2005 Vilnius performance, what I would want to point out in this context are the many facets of what Vyšniauskas and Kugel do in this performance that would seem resonate with what they do in the 2012 Lviv Ultramarine performance under discussion here. My guess, therefore, is that many of the musical lines of direction that can be heard in the Ultramarine project were likely first forged by Vyšniauskas and Kugel by way of their work in the Ganelin Trio Priority.

It may of course be the case that there are other lines of origination vis-a-vis the Ultramarine project too, some that I simply might not be aware of at this time. Here's at least one more probable instance, though: A very fine recording that Petras Vyšniauskas did in 2005 with Veronika Povilioniené—the “grand dame of Lithuanian folk music”—that is described as a “composition of blues rhythm and Baltic folk music”. There is enough of an overlap between Baltic and Slavic traditional music, I think, such that this sort of endeavor on the part of Vyšniauskas back in the day likely impacted what he later did with Horbachevska and company in Ultramarine.