Mieczysław ‘Mietek’ Kosz was a wonderful pianist with a prospect of becoming one of the leading jazz pianists in Poland. The hole left by the tragic death of Krzysztof ‘Komeda’ Trzciński in 1969 at the age of 37 was huge. Perhaps could Kosz contribute to filling this hole.
Unfortunately the blind pianist died a little over a half year before his 30th birthday. He died from a fall out of a window of his own flat in Warsaw, on May 31, 1973. People close to him emphatically dismisses that it was suicide.
In the Polish jazz community he is remembered fondly. But outside of Poland he has been almost forgotten. This release and the coming series will hopefully contribute to changing this.
He had only one LP released before his untimely passing, Reminiscence, released in 1972 on Polskie Nagranie Muza. Since then a few other recordings by the national Polish Radio has emerged. Two, now very rare, LPs were released in 1975 by the Jazz Record Club of the Polish Jazz Society, Klub Płytowy PSJ. They have been reissued on CD, simply as Mieczysław Kosz.
More recently, two CDs have been released in the fabulous series Polish Radio Jazz Archives, in 2013 – again as Mieczysław Kosz, and in 2023 further archival recordings – as Piano Solo, Duo, Trio Volume 2, with recordings made in the Polish radio studios.
Now Polskie Radio releases the first recordings of Mieczysław Kosz from their archives – Debuit – Jazz Jamboree ‘67/’68. As far as I know, these recordings have never been issued before.
This release are recordings made by the Polish public radio at the Jazz Jamboree festival in 1967 and 1968. The first four tracks are from 23 year old Kosz and his trio’s sensational debut at the Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw in October 1967. The trio appeared as part of a “New Faces in Jazz” presentation. Mieczysław Kosz was a complete unknown before this first concert, with a trio that had only had one rehearsal before the debut. The CD reproduces the complete 1967 performance.
After the debut concert he was far from an unknown. He had played at a series of European jazz festivals, and won several international prices. It was vident that Kosz should be back at the festival in October 1968. A pianist with tremendous technique, and strongly influenced by Bill Evans. He had dechiffered the recent advances by Bill Evans’ trio works that combined a melodic basis with free methods in a totally new way. He was now in the process of developing a distinctive voice, where he was strongly focussed on color and tone in his presentation.
The Polish radio editor for this release, Adam Domogała, writes in the liner notes, that this is “[t]he first in a new series of albums dedicated to the blind genius … [it] cannot begin otherwise than with his legendary debut on the stage of the National Philharmonic” on October 13, 1967.
The debut programme opened with a rendition of John Carisi’s “Israel”, a tune he clearly has picked up from Bill Evans’ record Explorations of 1961, with Evans’ first great trio; Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums. Kosz continues with a paraphrase of Fryderyk Chopin’s Preludium in C minor, opus 28. This was probably the first time Chopin’s music was used as platform for musical explorations in a jazz idiom.
At the debut concert he also played one of his own compositions, all of the four tunes he was supported by the able work by Kozłowski on bass, and Perkowski on drums.
During the next year he composed several new tunes and played them in concerts and radio programmes. At the Jazz Jamboree festival in 1968, he appears more confident as a musician, and now the programme also included three of his own compositions.
There are “many hours of Kosz’ recordings” in the archives of the Polish public radio, according to Domogała, so we have a future of a string of exciting releases of this pianist to look forward to.
However, I do not understand why this release has not been included in the archival jazz release series. And why the radiobased record label has just produced an all Polish language edition, with no translation, is beyond me. I would strongly urge the people behind the release to include an English translation for the coming releases.
Highly recommended!
Mieczysław Kosz (piano), Janusz Kozłowski (double bass), Sergiusz Perkowski (drums)
The record is available from the Polish Radio web store.
Johan Hauknes
This embedding is of a total playlist of six parts. Together they present a 54 minute portrait of Mieczysław Kosz, made by the Polish TVP Kultura in 2007. Unfortunately in the Polish language, but you get to see some rare footage, and hear the music, of Kosz.
