Ricercar (from the Italian ricercare, to seek, to search) is a musical  form that developed and flourished in remarkable ways during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was cultivated by  the greatest polyphonists and improvisers of the period: Giovanni  Gabrieli, Girolamo Frescobaldi and, ultimately, Johann Sebastian  Bach, whose six-part ricercar from The Musical Offering stands  as one of the genre’s supreme achievements. At its core, the ricercar is about the interaction between instruments, dialogue, and  searching for a shared musical path. Historically, the genre took  two principal forms: the imitative ricercar and the freer type. It  is the latter, rooted primarily in the lute tradition, that provides  the point of departure for the Bydgoszcz Composers’ Collective’s  suite.

Scored for amplified saxophones, live electronics and percussion,  the work displays a discipline that is immediately perceptible  and sustained throughout every movement. Bill (Frisell), Elvin  (Jones), Steve (Coleman), Gato (Barbieri), Billy (Cobham), Johns  (Coltrane & McLaughlin) and Miles (Davis): none of the protagonists in these musical portraits occupies more than five minutes  of the suite’s duration (except for the Johns, who are, after all,  two!). The Collective takes the audience on a journey through landscapes that shift in polyrhythmic, post-tonal and intertextual  ways. Their inventiveness seems boundless, restrained by only  one principle: concision. An avalanche of ideas generating further  ideas is distilled into a concentrated form, brimming with energy,  refined sonorities and powerful expressivity.

Przemek Psikuta, Rafał Gorzycki