"You know, last night - I don't know why, exactly - it was very hard to sleep. I don't know - maybe it was the traffic, the noise, the energy of the city. I felt things too unsettled, not yet right."
Michal Urbaniak spent many sleepless nights during his first six months in New York, launching both a new musical career and perhaps more importantly, a "new music" in the United States. Planning, thinking, figuring out, plotting, resolving, changing. At four in the morning he would stir out of bed and quietly turn on a beat-up, brown metallic Wurlitzer electric piano and try out a new idea. He'd wake up his wife, the enormously talented vocalist Urszula Dudziak (she's heard on her own Columbia LP, Newborn Light, KC 32902), to see if she could add a vocal line to his musical thought. He'd play a little more, and then try to get back to sleep. Tired, in the hot, white New York June sun, Michal would be out of his hotel early the next morning, taking the long, crowded bus ride up Sixth Avenue to the grey walls of Columbia Records, where he would go over every aspect of his musical career, never imposing, but in a quiet, subtle, polite, complete way. Afternoons: trying out new material, writing, looking for a place to live, practicing, working out every musical detail in every composition. And then at night, the band would perform: Michal and the musicians heard on Atma made their New York debut at Max's Kansas City, where they played four straight weeks before packed houses. After three shows, at four in the morning, Michal would get home, and - once again - fight sleep.
When Michal Urbaniak lived in Poland, Sweden and other parts of Europe over the last ten years, he had every reason to sleep well at night: as a jazz musician, he had achieved as much success as one could have expected. He had a dozen extremely successful albums to his credit (including Super Constellation on CBS Germany which led to a contract with Columbia Records); he was named "Musician of the Year" by Europe's most prestigious jazz publication, Jazz Forum: he was an accomplished violinist, saxophonist, composer and leader of one of the most popular and respected groups on the Continent.
Why the insomnia?
"I was very comfortable in Poland, but as a musician, it was very important for me to come to New York and the United States and perform here. That has been my goal since I can remember, and I think it is the real goal of any contemporary musician in Europe. Being here, I just felt that I could not take it easy until I felt all of the conditions surrounding my music making were right."
With the release of Atma, it becomes obvious that those musical "conditions" have been resolved. It is music with an energy that will let the listener do anything but sleep.
Robert Hurwitz
Michal Urbaniak's Fusion - Atma
Columbia, KC 33184 / 1974
Tracklist:
01. Mazurka
02. Butterfly
03. Largo
04. Ilex
05. New York Batsa
06. Kama (Part I)
07. Kama (Part II)
08. Atma - Yesterday
09. Atma - Today
10. Atma - Tomorrow
Personnel:
Michał Urbaniak: electric violin, Vi-tar violin, soprano saxophone
Urszula Dudziak: voice, percussion
Czesław Bartkowski: drums
Paweł Jarzębski: bass
Wojciech Karolak: Fender piano, Moog, Farfisa, clavinet
Ray Mantilla: congas, drums, percussion
Recorded at Columbia Records Studios, New York, in June 1974 by Stanley Tonkel & Ken Robertson.
Mixed by Pete Weiss, Stanley Tonkel & Ken Robertson.
Cover design - Art Sims, cover art - Stan Zagorski.
Ripped (and, unfortunately, poorly cleaned) by joeyzaza (Rutracker)
I did my best to improve it
FLACzki-tracki, photos . . 279.4 MB (3% data repair)
