Maps and Mazes, her first solo album, is a collection of truly sublime pieces from a generous handful of these concordances. The search for connectivity and reciprocity stands boldly as its unifying theme.
Szczecin composer and violinist Olga Wojciechowska has proven a prolific collaborator, striving far beyond Poland’s borders to engage in a string of dance, theater and multimedia projects. Maps and Mazes, her first solo album, is a collection of truly sublime pieces from a generous handful of these concordances. The search for connectivity and reciprocity stands boldly as its unifying theme.
As a prelude, she has Norwegian trombonist Kristoffer Kompen sobbing in the morning rain of “The White Space” before the shimmering gongs and electronics of “Primal Fear” pan the clearing skies above, coming across a singing angel. The cinematic strings of “Melting Into Unknown,” composed for Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui´s “Puz/zle”, bind the listener tight. “Number of Possible Worlds,” the only track not credited to a previous production, features a slow, sandy violin loop broadcast into the great, black non-echo.
The spine-tingling “I´m Never Not Thinking of You” is the first track on which the violin opens wide its wooden breast, priming the heart for the understated elegance of “Faith Tuner,” koto caressed over a rippling, grey drone. Interesting those two such touching pieces were written for the “rebooting” a popular, apocalyptic manga comic starring a robot boy.
“Lazy Indifference,” like the opening and closing tracks written for Avenida Corrientes – The Movie (a mockumentary within mockumentary within a play) is a huffing, tubercular effort. For Genesis, the piano-tinkling, bong-bubbling “Resonating Memories” is logically followed by “Abandoned Words,” after which moonblinked violin asks someone to “Walk My Shadow Home,” before Kompen returns to close with a weary, late-night serenade.
Back in 1959, historian Eric Hobsbawm called jazz the “unanswerable sound,” while urging his readers to nonetheless fearlessly explore that obscure zone where society and the creation of art happens. Wojciechowska’s ethereal Maps and Mazes chart landless latitudes, similarly unanswerable, but eminently explorable.
Maps and Mazes is available on Time Released Sound.
