September Night (ECM)
Tomasz Stańko Quartet
Released June 21, 2024
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2024
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Recorded at Munich’s Muffathalle in September 2004, this previously-unreleased live album of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet is a fascinating document, capturing a developmental chapter in the group’s music: between the song forms of the Suspended Night repertoire and the improvised areas that the Polish players would explore on Lontano. The Munich show was a highlight in a year in which the Stanko Quartet played a record number of gigs, with extensive tours of the US and Europe. The great trumpeter himself is at his charismatic best here, playing superbly, clearly inspired by the energetic support and communicative power of Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michal Miskiewicz, the dynamic young musicians for whom he had been a mentor.
The work with his Polish quartet lifted Tomasz Stanko to a new level of recognition. In the wake of the Soul of Things recording, the first of his ECM discs with Wasilewski, Kurkiewicz and Miskiewicz, the trumpeter won the European Jazz Prize. From the jury’s citation: “While Stanko has obviously drawn on American models, he has developed a unique sound and personal music that is instantly recognizable and unmistakably his own, rooted in his Slavic heritage, romantic upbringing and classical education, which he received in Cracow before starting a jazz career in the early ‘60s. His distinctive rough tone conveys a sense of drama, melancholy, sadness and existential pain. A free-jazz pioneer, he went on to become one of the finest trumpeters, a world-class player, a stylist, a charismatic performer and original composer, his music now assuming simplicity of form and mellowness that comes with years of work, exploration and experience. Tomasz Stanko – a true master and leader of European jazz.”
“My greatest teacher was, of course, Tomasz Stanko,” pianist Marcin Wasilewski would recall, after the trumpeter’s death in 2018. “We were growing by his side and he was watching us. Every concert we played with him was important – the most important, almost as if it was the last one. That’s the approach he taught us: ‘when you play music, play it at a thousand per cent!’”
Stanko’s ‘mentoring’ process mostly took place inside the music itself. “Tomasz didn’t talk to us much,” says Michal Miskiewicz, in an interviewer newly published in Modern Drummer. “It was always about playing what you feel. That was the kind of artist and bandleader he was. We felt very free to do what we do. He assumed that if we didn’t talk about how we should play, we would do it better.”
Though Stanko fronted several strong bands concurrently in his later years, the Polish quartet ultimately proved to be his longest lasting line-up – they began playing together in 1993, and their final concert was in Warsaw in 2017.
The special musical understanding between Stanko and Wasilewski was often remarked upon by the press. “Stanko’s rapport with Wasilewski is uncanny,” wrote Alyn Shipton in The Times, “with the two of them sliding almost seamlessly between passages of intricately composed melody to free improvisation over the modal vamps favoured in the writing.”
By 2004 Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz had also established a solid international reputation as a potent force in their own right. After a decade as the Simple Acoustic Trio, a group formed when they were teenagers in Koszalin, they were in the process of transitioning into a new identity as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, and going from strength to strength artistically. “In the entire history of Polish jazz, we’ve never had a band like this one,” Tomasz Stanko declared at the time. “I’m surprised by these musicians every day. And they just keep getting better and better.”
The Wasilewski Trio’s recent releases including En Attendant and Arctic Riff, the latter a collaboration with Joe Lovano. The trio is currently celebrating its thirtieth anniversary.
The Stanko Quartet’s Muffathalle concert of September 2004 was presented in the context of a symposium for improvised music under the banner headline Unforeseen, co-curated by Munich’s Kulturreferat and the musicology department of the Ludwig Maximillian University. The week-long event also provided a source for two other live recordings previously released by ECM: Evan Parker’s Boustrophedon and Roscoe Mitchell’s Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3.
Track Listing:
1. Hermento’s Mood (Tomasz Stanko) 05:27
2. Song For Sarah (Tomasz Stanko) 06:20
3. Euforila (Tomasz Stanko) 09:44
4. Elegant Piece (Tomasz Stanko) 10:21
5. Kaetano (Tomasz Stanko) 08:47
6. Celina (Tomasz Stanko) 10:43
7. Theatrical (Tomasz Stanko) 06:33
Personnel:
Tomasz Stanko Quartet
Tomasz Stanko: trumpet
Marcin Wasilewski: piano
Slawomir Kurkiewicz: double Bass
Michal Miskiewicz: drums
Recorded September 2004, Muffathalle, Munich
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Mixed by Manfred Eicher with Marcin Wasilewski and Stefano Amerio
Review:
Recorded at Munich’s Muffathalle in 2004, September Night finds the late Polish trumpet icon Tomasz Stanko in rich, painterly dialogue with his quartet. Stanko, who died from lung cancer in 2018 at age 76, had put the group together in the early ’90s after becoming impressed with their work. Initially known as Simple Acoustic Trio (and now recognized as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio), pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz, and drummer Michal Miskiewicz had formed while still in high school in Poland, drawing inspiration from Stanko’s longtime mentor Krzysztof Komeda. Stanko took notice and began performing with them, ultimately recording three highly acclaimed albums for ECM: 2002’s Soul of Things, 2004’s Suspended Night, and 2006’s Lontano. Here, they dig into a selection of Stanko originals that balance a deeply composed lyricism with moments of rough-edged free improvisation. The opening “Hermento’s Mood” starts imperceptibly soft with a woody bass and trumpet duet before the others join in, their dancerly interplay. From there, Stanko and his group settle into the dusky twilight balladry of “Song for Sarah” and leap with throaty abandon into the hard-driving “Euforila.” Particularly compelling is “Elegant Piece,” a noir-like ballad that slowly mutates into a delicately swinging minor-key hard bop number. Throughout, Stanko plays with a warm swagger, both leaning into his protégés and sparring with them, as on “Kaetano,” where he spits short staccato notes like a boxer trying to fake out his opponent. Wasilewski and the trio never seem thrown and jab back, absorbing the trumpeter’s blows with sharp tonal chords one minute and diffuse harmonic clouds the next. Their interplay feels almost psychic and speaks to the deep creative connection Stanko shared with them. It’s a vibe that evokes Miles Davis’ second great quintet, a group that similarly found a trumpeter leading and, more often than not, being challenged by an ensemble of younger players. Though they would not return to the studio, the quartet continued to perform together up until Stanko fell ill, and September Night captures the group deep in the swell of their creative partnership.
Matt Collar (AllMusic)
