Dominik Wania Lonely Shadows

180g Vinyl LP!
After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet (Unloved, Three Crowns), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disciplines makes Dominik Wania one of the most distinctive players of his generation. Lonely Shadows is a testimony to his creative originality as well as a significant addition to ECM’s celebrated line of solo piano recordings. Produced by Manfred Eicher.
"One listens to the music's confrontation with the grand piano in the form of an unfolding dialogue about the possibilities of pianistic expression. In doing so, Wania takes a cliche-free approach, although it has references to impressionist classical music, but more as a color than as a real quote. Despite freedom as a specification of the creation process, he remains in a structurally constructive framework, composes songs out of silence, sparkling, lingering, rarely rising up. They are reflections on the possibilities of a recital as well as on the aesthetics of a contemporary harmony, clear, open and preserving at the same time." - Ralf Dombrowski, Stereoplay ('Album of the Month')
"One of the great beauties of this album is hearing every note resonate, you hold your breath to hang on to the last fragments of sound, they hang in the air. There is a glittery surface to the music much like Maurice Ravel’s works, and like those, there is depth where emotions are explored. […] Wania has created a timeless artwork of luminous beauty that will outlive the current calamity and many to come. This is an album of the heart that simultaneously pays attention to all the technicalities of touch, nuance and delicacy that we can depend upon from a classically trained pianist whilst displaying the nimble improvisation of the finest jazz pianists." - Mary James, London Jazz News
"An album that is musical in the truest sense of the word. Wania bundles his classical education and his joy in improvisation and explores the unfolding music in front of our ears. And it oscillates between Satie, Weber, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Ravel and Messiaen – all of them declared role models of Domink Wania. The courage to face the reception unprepared is fully rewarded. The freshness that radiates from these pieces is rarely heard." - Sebastian Meißner, Sounds and Books
"There are eleven original pieces on the recording, each offering something different. There are hints of the great romantic composers, with a free-flowing gorgeous lyricism, through to moments of mesmerising experimentation. Highlights include the wonderful opener and title track, with its sensitivity pure enough to wash away all the problems of the world, even if just for a short moment in time. The closing piece ‚All What Remains‘ is just as beautifully performed, reflective in nature, with moments of clarity reaching out from its contemplative narration. ‚New Life Experience‘ and ‚Liquid Fluid‘ flow effortlessly in a similar vein, whilst tunes like ‚Relativity‘ and ‚Subjective Objectivity‘ offer a nice contrast with a more experimental edge to them. ‚Lonely Shadows‘ reflects the aesthetic influence of composers Wania admires and has studied closely, including Satie, Prokofiev, Ravel and Messiaen, whilst also benefiting from the pianist’s experiences performing with Polish and international jazz musicians such as Tomasz Stanko, Lee Konitz, Nguyen Le and Dave Liebman. A confident album from the Polish pianist, and one with many merits." - Mike Gates, UK Vibe
"The Munich label welcomes Dominik Wania solo for an original and carefully constructed program of twelve pieces. [...] he is one of those young pianists whose classical heritage in the broadest sense (up to Scriabin or even the Vienna School) is the place of an intimate relationship to sound, to articulation, to the treatment of sound planes. [...] Far from the exaltation as from the technical demonstration, the search for precision and control that is played out here may confuse at first listening, but could well fill the following ones." - Vincent Cotro, Jazz Magazine
"Wania deliberately decided not to take any compositions with her to the studio, but to draw freely improvising from the moment. The result are eleven pianopoemes in which one literally thinks to follow the artist in translating sensations into sounds: concentrated, sensitive, nuanced." - Reinhold Unger, Munich Mercury
"Dominik Wania improvises in the realms between classical and jazz, never becomes 'free' and at the same time plays more freely and form-conscious than was possible for the fathers of free jazz in the 1960s." - Werner Stiefele, Rondo
"The pianist, a member of the Maciej Obara quartet, goes solo with a series of spontaneous improvs on his ECM debut, mainly informed by 20th century impressionism and more abstract composition and executed with elegance, poise, fleetness of touch and an organic-sounding flow of ideas." - Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise
"The delicacy of Wania's touch - magnified by an admirable sound recording - especially carries the improvisations of 'Lonely Shadows' at arm's length, all inhabited by a solid narrative thread. A superb inner journey produced by Manfred Eicher that anesthetizes boredom and makes space shine brightly and sometimes even silences." - Marc Zisman, Jazz News
"In tone, touch and texture, you can recognize a huge talent and potential for a great career from the thirty-something. So Manfred Eicher's intuition has once again brought harvest. [...] It is precisely through his well-founded classical education that Wania creates creative spaces for himself, which he uses with sensitive and emotionally stirring improvisations." - Ernst Weiss, Concerto
"An a bold move, Wania decided that nothing should be prepared in advance and that the music would be fully improvised on the day. Listening now to ‚Lonely Shadows‘, the decision is fully justified in album that is a pure joy, and over a playing time of forty eight minutes tells us much about the pianist. Working, as he says, in the ‚here and now‘ was obviously inspiring for Wania as he spins out some delightful improvisations. He balances the discipline of his classical studies with his intuitive sense as an improviser, and lets the music speak. His sensitivity of touch and harmonic awareness combine to bring out the best in the piano he was to choose to play for the recording. […] The pianist exhibits a sense of calm that permeates the music. Even at its most turbulent Wania’s grasp of the music guides the improvisations on a steady course, and that is part of the joy in hearing the pieces come to life. Organically evolving from the opening statements, there is never the impression that the music is allowed to simply run, but is guided unerringly by Wania’s overriding sense of melody and internal form that gives these spontaneously created compositions a life of their own. An auspicious debut album that bears repeated listening, each time revealing new delights." - Nick Lea, Jazz Views
"The classically trained scholarship holder of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston already caused a sensation as a member of the Maciej Obara Quartet, now his debut with ECM follows with a solo piano record, with which ECM convincingly continues his equally demanding tradition of solo pianistic pursuits - let's just think of Keith Jarrett or Chick Corea. Eicher moved with Wania to his recently favorite studio of the Radio of Italian Switzerland in Lugano, whose wood paneling contributed to the wonderfully warm, at the same time enormously differentiated grand piano sound [...] 'Lonely Shadows' confidently emerges from the shadow of great role models, because after the dreamy introduction with the title song, Wania lets you hear that Scriabin, Webern, Prokofieff are among his 'classic' favorites." - Lothar Brandt, Mint
"Dominik Wania celebrates his pianistic sophistication in different moods and combines it with his great art of improvisation. The result is at least as impressive as his previous appearances on albums, for example by the Maciej Obara Quartet [...] Dominik Wania's soulful keystroke is already highly recognizable and will ensure further high-quality recordings. With his skills, he is in the best possible place at ECM." - Ralf Henke, LP Magazine
"Entering Swiss-Italian radio’s renowned Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano in November of 2019, Wania came with a desire to play fully improvised music. He dug deep into his musical memory bank, and every last detail of his spontaneous flow is captured by Stefano Amerio’s customarily crisp engineering. The effect is rather like viewing pages in an artist’s sketchbook, each piece springing from the kernel of an idea, expressed in strokes which are often more suggestive than complete. Distant echoes of Messiaen and Jarrett stalk the somewhat reflective and melancholic opener, while the busy Corea-esque chordal shifts of ‘New Life Experience’ are rather more playful, conveying the joy of discovery and never settling in one place for too long. […] A highly accomplished work which belies Wania’s relative youth (approaching 39 at the time of recording), ‘Lonely Shadows’ can sit proudly in Eicher’s growing and justly venerated catalogue of solo piano works." - Fred Grand, Jazz Journal
"First there is the sound. The ECM sound is superlative since the album of the Polish pianist is produced by Manfred Eicher himself. And then there is a special intimacy in these eleven tracks where the musician's deepmm has been felt, his love of impressionists, his reveries, the lonely shadows, as the title of the album says. The influence is certainly classical, Debussy, Ravel. But the way is infinitely jazz: the immediate improvisation. [...] His music is surprisingly light, it is airy and, at the same time, it conveys deep and sincere emotions. It's a medication. Cèst, simply, beautiful." - Jean-Claude Vantroyen, Le Soir MAD

Features:

• 180g Vinyl
• Audiophile High Quality Pressing
• Mastered From Original Analog Source
• Recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, November 2019
• Made in Germany