Pianist Łukasz Ojdana shines at Palatia Jazz Festival 2022

Palatia Jazz Festival has been organised and run by Yvonne Moissl and her partner Jurgen since 1997. The festival hold concerts on weekends across the wine rich Palatinate region of Germany. In ‘normal’ festival years the outdoor shows are hosted in different towns using varied and interesting venues such as a Cathedral, a ruined Abbey, a Manor House Garden, even an old army barracks and the concerts go from June till August.

This year due to covid concerns and a lack of early committed funding the festival was very nearly cancelled. Of the original plans 6 of the 7 venues were lost as were several invited artists - notably Avashi Cohen (trumpet) and Marius Neset.

The decision was made to hold just two weekends of concerts at the same venue - the Ökonomierat Lind Winery in Rohrbach. This helped in reducing costs as once the stage had been set-up it remained in place for the two weekends of the festival.

A great feature of this festival is the “Jazzkulinarium” a culinary prelude that is organised for the audience. You arrive around 6pm and enjoy fine food and wine before the concerts start around 8pm. Holding the concerts in a winery made the choice of wines available during the evening very interesting!

There was an eastern European flavour to the festival with artists from the Ukraine (Ganna Gryniva, Leléka) and Poland (Maciej Obara, Pawel Kaczmarczyk) along with American Pianist Gerald Clayton with his trio who played on the first weekend.

Travelling from Italy to Sweden we managed to arrive in Rohrbach for the last night of the festival. The line-up was top German combo Triosence plus the Adam Bałdych Quartet.

Running a festival is stressful at the best of times but for the organisers today it had been off the scale. Yvonne explained that a few days previously the drummer of Triosence had contracted covid so couldn’t play - luckily a replacement had been found in time so that the concert could go ahead. However, The Adam Bałdych Quartet had arrived without their bandleader: the violinist had a serious family emergency and so had not travelled. A terrible situation to be in hours before a concert was due to start.

Triosence (above) led by German pianist Bernhard Schüler are one of the leading piano trios in Germany - playing excellent modern jazz with a distinct cinematic feel to it - Schüler is a very likeable frontman and player and bassist Omar Rodriguez Calvo one of the best European players around at the moment. Stand in drummer Fritz Lichius looked and sounded like he played with the band every week even though this was his first time playing with them! A great concert and very enjoyable music.

With little else to do at such short notice the main concert went ahead as a trio performance led by Bałdych’s pianist Łukasz Ojdana. The concert was to have been Bałdych’s tribute to Polish violinist Henryk Wieniawski (1834-1880) as featured on his new CD ‘Legend’ recorded with this trio. Not being familiar with any of Wieniawski’s music and a relative newcomer of Bałdych’s I was already coming to the concert with ‘fresh’ ears. What a total joy this concert was!

This is an amazing piano trio - foremost Ojdana is a brilliant pianist - he plays with great feeling and sensitivity - the solo ballad he played half way through the concert was sublime. The trio worked hard together - each taking on more solo’s and using this opportunity to showcase their own talents and really shine. One on the audience members enthused to me afterwards ‘it’s hard to think how this concert could have be any better!’.

The trio also played a glorious version of ‘Chronology’ by Ornette Coleman, finishing with the wonderful ‘Open Sky’ from the Paulo Fresu/Adam Bałdych CD of the same name. Michael Barański on bass and David Fortuna on drums were very impressive - this is a seriously good trio! There was a great buzz after the evening had finished and I can’t recall seeing so many audience members going up and congratulating the players.

Against all odds this was a great evening of music and a brilliant example of how adaptive and versatile jazz musicians and organisers are - and have to be.