Ava Mendoza, Charles Lloyd and Craig Taborn among the highlights at Jazztopad jazz fest

The house concert is much more than a concert in a house. Beyond the opportunity to hear music at very close quarters, with the players often no more than a few feet away, there is a breathe-easy informality to the whole event, as artist and audience rub shoulders, clink glasses and break bread. And also take off their shoes together.

At one of the most memorable of these residential gigs at this year’s Jazztopad, a premier European festival that has recently exported an edition to America, there is a degree of humour that frames the music. While Argentine saxophonist Camilla Nebbia and Polish clarinetist Mateusz Rybicki wear odd socks American guitarist Ava Mendoza sports matching ones with Pow! lettering - perhaps as part of a set that includes Zap! and Biff! For the gaggle of kids sat on comfy chairs who never saw Batman beat down The Joker and The Riddler on television the detail may have been lost, but the crunchy words could not have been more apt for Mendoza’s riffs. She turns out to be something of a sonic superhero, performing with a verve, punch and attention to detail in a number of short, intense sets. In the freely improvised sessions of the house concerts that pair her with the aforesaid as well as pianist Marta Warelis, double bassist Zbigniew Kozera and drummer Samuel Hall, she didn’t need cape, mask or utility belt. A six-string and an array of pedals suffice.

Mendoza, who has played with such luminaries as William Parker, as well as leading her own bands, is a notable contemporary guitarist who makes her own very personal synthesis of any number of traditions, from blues and rock to avant-garde and the interesting space where electronica, noise and sound manipulation on-the-fly all meet. Echoes of Hendrix, Sharrock and Michael Gregory Jackson can be heard in her approach, but it is when Mendoza plays solo at the Mlecznaria club that she comes into her own as a leader. Her use of effects to make her tone anything from howling wind to grinding metal to floating breath lends enormous imagery to songs, but Mendoza’s voice and way with a lyric, typified by a piece such as ‘New Ghosts’, a celebration of the dearly departed, lends a further communicative slant to her music.   

Craig Taborn - Photo by Karol Adam Sokolowski

Interestingly, it is another solo set that provides a moment of magic during the festival. American pianist-composer Craig Taborn has been one of the key exponents of his instrument for over two decades and he looks to have hit something of an artistic peak. On the back of several outstanding albums for ECM he presented a double bill at Jazztopad. He starts the evening with a magnificent unaccompanied performance that is marked by all the limitless imagination and skill of execution that have come to define his output. In the Red Hall, the smaller auditorium of the splendidly appointed National Forum Of Music, Taborn plays a suite that feels simultaneously improvised and composed, as if the ideas, emotion and above all desire to avoid stylistic cliché are constantly pushing him down new creative paths. His ability to make a snaking and spiraling of rhythm sound anything but ungainly, because of his absolute command of time and superior touch, sees him bring depth to an energetic and reflective set, which he laces with spectral harmonies and shifts in attack. At times there is a vague echo of the rich lopsided melodic ways of the great Jaki Byard but Taborn is liable to evoke something of the hard edges of the Digital Age through his use of all manner of Incidental noise from anywhere and everywhere in the piano, right down to squeaks of pedals and keys or the trailing decay of a chord. 

In the second half of the concert his collaboration with the acclaimed Lutoslawski Quartet, one of the best string groups in any genre, is equally inspiring, primarily because his character shines through in the score he penned for players who smartly negotiate the juddering, jack-knifing motifs and stark jolts of meter, into which whirl live electronics akin to the ‘daylight ghosts’ evoked in Taborn’s previous work.  

Mazur/Bro/Henriksen - Photo by Karol Adam Sokolowski

The two headline gigs of the final weekend of the nine-day event (I missed the first due to its overlap with the London Jazz Festival) are also notable for their use of technology to varying degrees. Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur, her compatriot, guitarist Jakob Bro and Norwegian trumpeter-vocalist Arve Henriksen all enhance their soundworld with a range of effects, which leads to some beautifully enchanting moments. But the set also has several passages of stagnation, in which an initial idea is not sufficiently developed, or the choice of electronic accompaniment detracts from the acoustic timbres rather than enhancing them, particularly on the back of Henriksen’s throat singing, which doesn’t sit well on the canvas created by his collaborators.

Charles Lloyd and band - Photo by Karol Adam Sokolowski

The following night Bro is a special guest of saxophone legend Charles Lloyd’s Ocean trio, and that proves a match made in heaven. The leader has all the tender, languorous passion in his playing, especially on flute, that has made him such an icon for the best part of six decades, and in pianist Gerald Clayton and guitarist Marvin Sewell he has wonderful soul mates who dutifully respond to and elaborate on the vividly expressive, often deeply meditative ambiances. Bro manages to fit in perfectly, sometimes maintaining a discreet but effective presence by way of the most slender of chords or glassy reverb while Sewell mines an earthy seam of the blues. Crucially, the quartet is in conversation. That spirit of encounter and exchange is an integral part of Jazztopad. And the after hours jam sessions as well as the annual Melting Pot ensemble, a gathering of young improvisers selected by European festival curators, ensured that every November, Wroclaw really is a go-to destination for any audience open to a set of new adventures in creative music along roads less travelled. And on the merch table this year there was something fit for superheroes: a pair of cotton socks.