“A few years ago I played at the Jazztopad festival. I saw the Lutosławski Quartet perform. I was dazzled by it and started thinking about how we could work together,” recalled Michael Bates in an interview with The Strad magazine earlier this year. On his way back to Canada, the artist began sketching the first compositions, and in 2022, his band Acrobat performed with the Lutosławski Quartet at the Barbès club during a New York edition of Jazztopad. Then, both bands recorded the album Metamorphoses: Variations on Lutosławski at the NFM.

During the upcoming festival, Bates’ quintet will once again meet the Polish quartet to present the repertoire from Metamorphoses to the Wrocław audience. The double bassist chose Lutosławski’s compositions from different periods: the earliest is the Trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon from 1944, while the latest is the Sacher Variation from 1975. The original instrumentation of the pieces he took up was also diverse: from those for a solo instrument to works for orchestra. He was already familiar with the specifics of this type of scoring and conceptual work on a 20th-century composer’s output: he had the album Music for, and by, Dmitri Shostakovich from 2012 to his credit. At that time, though, he had “only” a jazz quintet at his disposal, and on Metamorphoses he had the opportunity to work with his Acrobat ensemble and the Lutosławski Quartet.

Bates made excellent use of these performance forces. He interpreted the Polish composer’s music with imagination and sensitivity, effectively using the sounds of the entire line-up. Since there is no harmonic instrument there, Bates’ arrangement ideas are all the clearer. For example, the intertwining of the clarinet (Marty Ehrlich) and bassoon (Sara Schoenbeck) is intriguing. Also worth noting is the relationship between the solo violin – sometimes boldly improvising – played by Fung Chern Hwei and what the string quartet offers. It is obvious to the listener that Bates had no lack of inspiration. The artist skillfully doses exact quotes from Lutosławski, combining them with fragments that barely refer to him. Ultimately, he directs this music in new directions: groove, contrast and unpredictability.