AGA ZARYAN — A Book Of Luminous Things (review)

AGA ZARYAN — A Book Of Luminous Things album cover Album · 2011 · Vocal Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
idlero
Aga Zaryan (born Agnieszka Skrzypek January 17, 1976) is an internationally recognized Polish jazz vocalist of the new generatio.She was named Jazz Vocalist of The Year in the European Jazz Forum Magazine's yearly Jazz Top readers' poll in 2007, 2008 and 2009.She is also the first Polish artist ever to release an album on Blue Note.

'A Book Of Luminous Things' is an ambitious project focused around texts by Polish Nobel Prize winner poet Czesław Miłosz and some of his favourite poetess(Jane Hierschfield, Anna Świrszczyńska, Denise Levertov). All tracks are composed by Michał Tokaj, and they are melodious , pensive and relaxed and are sung in English. What the album lacks in diversity, it gains in unity but it's main problem is the lack of real hits. Aga Zaryan's new project features a strong cast: Michał Tokaj on piano and Munyungo Jackson on percusion who remain from her previous project are joined by bassist Darek Oleszkiewicz ("Penumbra") and guitarist Larry Koonse who together with the Polish Radio String Orchestra manage to create a good album. Aga Zaryan is a promising young artist , I'm waiting with interest her future releases.
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snobb wrote:
more than 2 years ago
He is great Polish poet,just strongly related with Lithuania (he wrote in Polish) :). Anyway, right now there are lot of billboards with his portrait on the streets of Vilnius because of his jubilee. We just respect him as great Lithuanian Polish poet :) Culture as rule has no nationalities and borders :)
idlero wrote:
more than 2 years ago
He also said : "My family in the sixteenth century already spoke Polish, just as many families in Finland spoke Swedish and in Ireland English, so I am a Polish not a Lithuanian poet. But the landscapes and perhaps the spirits of Lithuania have never abandoned me" , go figure...
I took the info from the net, no offence intended to any people
snobb wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Czesław Miłosz was born and lived in Lithuania - this year is Year of Czesław Miłosz (because of his 100 years jubilee in my country).He said about himslef: " "I am a Lithuanian to whom it was not given to be a Lithuanian" (he was born in ethnic Poles family. And he studied law in Vilnius University, later graduated in Paris. On return worked on Radio Wilno in Vilnius.During WWII moved to Warsaw and in 1951 find political asylum in France running out from Socialist regime in Poland.

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