“Lectures” reviewed by Fourth Dimension

Lectures
Ten pieces originally composed by this Warsaw-based artist for a festival in the very same city in 2007, created in honour of Cornelius Cardew. Using previously unreleased sounds culled from performances, lectures and rehearsals by Cardew (and passed onto Piotr by his son, Walter), Kurek has subsequently developed them during the time since to simultaneously pay respect to them and tease them into a context more his own. The resulting compositions are surprisingly accessible on the whole, often working themselves around repetitive melodic fragments, sizeable chunks of dialogue, tiny gusts of sax spurting, swaying tonal wisps, and hints of mannered jazz that wholly betray the clanging that greets us at the disc’s entrance. Rather airy and full of movement, Lectures is a perfectly hewn listen that I’m sure would have been worth hearing in its original form, live, too. Kurek has done a good and respectful job here and, if Cornelius Cardew were still alive, I’d like to believe he’d feel much the same way. (Richard Johnson)

via Fourth Dimension

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