Painting and jazz like to correspond with each other, but also to influence and permeate each other. Jackson Pollock’s improvisational techniques used to the accompaniment of bebop or big band phrases and paintings by Miles Davis created in complete silence are the most famous examples. This year’s Jazztopad Festival brings another one. This is the premiere of the repertoire for string quartet and piano written by Craig Taborn, who drew inspiration from the works of Agnes Martin while composing.

Craig Taborn is one of the musical geniuses of our time. So much has happened in his career, spanning over thirty years, that there is an unprecedented distance between the first and last recordings. The author’s debut – Craig Taborn Trio – just like the album JC on the Set recorded a year earlier, is a galaxy absolutely different to contemporary albums: Compass Confusion, Interpret It Well and the 60 x Sixty project. Taborn evolves in all directions simultaneously, his musical genius unfolds like circles on the surface of a lake moments after a stone is thrown in. Each project authored by this pianist would be a very strong card in the programme of any jazz festival. The organizers of the Jazztopad Festival decided not to choose from his achievements accomplished so far, but to persuade the artist to create something completely new. The festival arena is not only a place of presentation and review of current musical phenomena, but also a place of their birth. On the last Friday in November, we will hear Luminous Grid in its entirety for the first time, the first part of which was made available to the guests of the New York edition of Jazztopad.

Before the concert at the National Forum of Music, all we know is that the American pianist will improvise to music he wrote specially for the Lutosławski Quartet, and one of the inspirations for this piece was the work of Agnes Martin. Her work was simple and complex at the same time. She was a phenomenal painter. She was called a minimalist, yet she identified herself with the New York trend of abstract expressionism. One contradicts the other, but are they mutually exclusive?