Wooden Tomasz Stańko Quintet

Dark places can be foreboding, and also comforting or beautiful if put into proper context. Trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has always used introspection as a means for making his music, but on this recording he's all but snuffed out the candlelight, inspired by the wispy smoke that trails to the ceiling. During the 2000s he retained a regular working band of very young musicians, and for Dark Eyes he's formed a new band of promising up-and-coming players from Northern Europe, with instrumentation modified from the piano/bass/drums backup trio. The very subtle Danish guitarist Jakob Bro (from Paul Motian's band), multiple competition prize-winner Finnish pianist Alexi Tuomarila, Danish electric bass guitarist Anders Christensen (ex-Ravonettes and Motian), and drummer Olavi Louhivuori (also an accomplished pianist, violinist, and cellist) from Finland are all new names to the ECM family…

Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko is most probably country's best known jazz musician for some decades and prestigious ECM label in-house artist. Better known (especially outside of his homeland) from his ECM-sound recordings, in his early ears Stanko played quite different music. Started his career still at late 60s, Tomasz played with in Polish legend Komeda band, starting his career as leader in early 70s. "Purple Sun" is Stanko quintet third album recorded live in empty hall of Music School in Munich,Germany. All-Polish quartet is completed with German bassist Hans Hartmann here. Album contains four originals (twolong and two shorter pieces). Confusingly enough, "Purple Sun" is often classified in music media (partially Polish) as early example of Polish avant-garde jazz which it isn't. In reality bass-drums-trumpet-sax quartet with violinist Zbigniew Seifert on board plays high energy fusion strongly influenced by Davis' "Silent Way"…

The second ECM album from this Polish-Swedish-British edition of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet follows the critically-heralded Matka Joanna. As Jazz Journal wrote, 'Trumpeter Stanko's vibrant breadth of tone and poetic feeling for cross-rhythmic drama are second to none.' Leosia marks a further progression, incorporating six first-rate Stanko compositions in his brooding 'Slavic' style, darker than the darkest Miles (and incorporating a tribute to Lautréamont, literature's Count of Darkness), as well as bracing and exploratory duo and trio improvisations, and solos of the higherst calibre by all concerned. The group has an unusual claim on idiomatic completeness; it seems to summarize, in highly original manner, many of the important developments of jazz of the last 30 years…

This album's title is perhaps the most concise and precise description of its contents. With the 1970s behind him Polish trumpeter / composer Tomasz Stanko takes a sharp turn off the path he followed previously as the leader of the local Free Jazz/avant-garde scene and as other musicians before him (or like a chameleon) entered the world of Jazz-Rock Fusion. The album was recorded in Athens in 1982 and remained unreleased until 1989 (by that time Stanko was already moving to the next phase of his career), when it was finally released by a small independent Greek label. But chronologically this is the first recording of Stanko's 1980s "new" style, preceding "C.O.C.X"…

Polish jazz trumpeter honored for his long history as a major contributor to European jazz.
Jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stańko began his tenure as a major force in European free jazz in the early '60s with the formation of the quartet Jazz Darins in 1962 with Adam Makowicz. From 1963 to 1967 he played with Krzysztof Komeda in a group that revolutionized European jazz and made an impact across the Atlantic as well. Stańko also put in time with Andrzej Trzaskowski in the mid-'60s before leading his own quintet from 1968 to 1973. The Tomasz Stańko Quintet, which included Muniak and Zbigniew Seifert, garnered considerable critical acclaim, especially for their tribute to Komeda entitled Music for K…

Tomasz Stanko Quintet - Music For K (1970) {Polskie Nagrania PNCD 922 rel 2004}
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© 1970, 2004 Polskie Nagrania | PNCD 922
Jazz / Post Bop / Avant-Garde Jazz / Trumpet

From the title it's fairly obvious that Stanko is dedicating this work to his former boss and compatriot, the late Kryzsztof Komeda, who had passed a few years before. But it's difficult to believe that this was recorded in 1970. Stanko's quintet was so fully versed in the free jazz aesthetic and pursued to fuse it to the European classicism and avant-gardism of his native Poland. There are five tracks here, all part of a larger suite that is opened and closed by a theme. Stanko's writing is for a large harmonic palette realizable by two saxophones and his own trumpet with a rhythm section.

This magnificent album by Polish trumpeter/composer Tomasz Stanko includes the rest of the music recorded at the same session, which produced the superb "Music 81" album. As with all great and prophetic Jazz Masters, Stanko's music was evolving constantly and by the time this session was recorded in 1982, he was ready to leave behind the avant-garde/Free Jazz/experimental music, which dominated his first period (late 1960s to late 1970s) and gradually move forward towards new things, which would include mostly Jazz-Rock Fusion and Jazz-Electronic experiments, which of course were all as advanced and adventurous as anything else he made earlier. That second period, which lasted roughly the whole decade of the 1980s, is well documented by the albums released during that time, each and every one of them indisputably a masterpiece in retrospect…

This soundtrack to Filip Zylber's film made for Polish television is among composer and trumpeter Tomasz Stanko's greatest achievements; it puts him on a par - when it comes to film music at least - with his former boss, the late Krzysztof Komeda. Stanko composed for a sizable group here, his own quartet plus an additional five musicians and a string quintet. The set begins with the title theme as a leitmotif, with strings covering the backdrop and trumpet and soprano saxophones playing a noirish love theme, and then gives way after a few minutes to a very brief "Love Motive." This second section is merely an atmospheric foreshadowing of the only non-original piece of music in the work, a version of Gounod and Bach's hymn Ave Maria…

The change of direction on Lontano, the third release by Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and his three young collaborators - Marcin Wasilewski (piano), Slawomir Kurkiewicz (bass), and Michal Miskiewicz (drums) - is startling. Whereas Soul of Things (2002) and Suspended Night (2004) focused on Stanko's increasing sense of balladry and structurally harmonic, assonant atmospheres, Lontano showcases a band confident enough after playing for five years to find real space for free improvisation. Recorded in the south of France instead of Oslo, producer Manfred Eicher works his name magic and allows stillness and silence to play as much a role as the performers engaging one another musically. The opening title track is the first of three such excursions with the title "Lontano"…