Marcin Wasilewski Trio - January

Marcin Wasilewski Trio

January

Label: ECM (2008)
Catalogue No:  ECM 2019
Format: CD

Tracks:

   

The First Touch

Vignette

Cinema Paradiso

Diamonds and Pearls

Balladyna

King Korn

The Cat

January

The Young and Cinema

New York 2007





Recorded February 2007



Personnel:



Marcin Wasilewski piano

Slawomir Kurkiewicz double-bass

Michal Miskiewicz drums

About:

“January” is a strong musical statement from a still-young band with a long
history already behind it, and an album with an exceptionally wide-ranging
programme - all of it played with assurance, purpose and focus. The disc
reconfirms that the trio of Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michal
Miskiewicz is one of the most outstanding contemporary jazz groups. Their friend
and mentor trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has said, “In the entire history of Polish
jazz we’ve never had a band like this one. They just keep getting better and
better.” It was through Stanko’s ECM recording “Soul of Things”, recorded 2001,
that the wider world first had a hint of the capacity of
Wasilewski/Kurkiewicz/Miskiewicz. Since then, they’ve toured widely with Stanko
and contributed mightily to his quartet recordings “Suspended Night”and
“Lontano”, recorded in 2003 and 2005.



As an autonomous force, the trio’s biography begins in 1990, when Wasilewski and
Kurkiewicz as 15-year old students at the Koszalin High School of Music began
playing jazz together. Their first trio was formed the following year. In 1993
drummer Miskiewicz joined them, and the group’s line-up has been stable ever
since. As the Simple Acoustic Trio they won awards in their homeland and issued
five albums on local labels. Their first international release, for ECM,
entitled just “Trio” was recorded in 2004 and released the following year,
immediately winning the Quarterly Prize of the German Record Critics. In the US,
too, critics were taking notice. “Their years together have resulted in an
ensemble with an utterly symbiotic creative flow,” wrote Don Heckman in the Los
Angeles Times.



The release of “January” - recorded in New York with producer Manfred Eicher
early in 2007 - also signals a change of name. Henceforth the group is, simply,
the MarcinWasilewski Trio. The group continues to be run as a collective of
equals, but its members have come to accept the convention that piano trios are
traditionally identified by their pianists. Besides, Marcin is the band’s
principal songwriter: he contributes four pieces to the present disc, including
the title track and the beautiful opener, “The First Touch”. Wasilewski also, at
the urging of the producer, addresses pieces written by Gary Peacock and by
Carla Bley - pieces identified with two major pianists, respectively Keith
Jarrett and Paul Bley. Wasilewski does not flinch from the challenge but, with
his trio partners, makes of this music something of his own.



“Vignette” is a composition by Gary Peacock first heard on the album “Tales of
Another”, the 1978 ECM recording which marked the coming together of the band
later known as Jarrett’s “Standards” Trio. The Wasilewski Trio takes it at a
statelier pace, and mines it for deeper emotions. A powerful performance,
especially in the light of Marcin’s indebtedness to Jarrett as a player.
Acknowledging the influence, he moves beyond it.



Carla Bley’s composition “King Korn” meanwhile is a piece of early 60s vintage
that surfaced on Paul Bley’s 1963 classic ”Footloose” recording with the great
trio line-up including Steve Swallow and Pete La Roca. The Polish trio fly at it
with invigorating energy and wonderful group interaction (the recording quality
illuminating detail with a clarity impossible back in the days when Paul Bley
was recording for Savoy), with especially exciting dialogues between Michal
Miskiewicz and Wasilewski.



“Balladyna”, a Tomasz Stanko tune, was title track of the Polish trumpeter’s ECM
debut disc (with a rhythm section of Dave Holland and Edward Vesala), back in
1975, the year Wasilewski was born. The trio’s dark, swirling rubato performance
has the stark drama and predatory lyricism associated Stanko; they’ve played the
piece often in concert with the composer.



On their 2004 ECM disc, the trio offered a luminous version of Björk’s “Hyperballad”.
This season’s pop cover is Prince’s “Diamonds and Pearls”, the ballad from 1991
which gains a deal of mystery in this stripped-down interpretation in which
bassist Kurkiewicz shares the melody with Wasilewski.



The cinematic arts are never far away in Polish jazz; ever since 1958, when
Komeda first collaborated with Polanski, the genres have influenced each other.
Wasilewski’s “The Young and Cinema” references an identically-titled festival of
new Polish films held in Koszalin. The trio also covers Ennio Morricone’s title
theme for Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 film “Cinema Paradiso”, itself a celebration
of film.



The album closes with a trio improvisation, a free ballad made in the moment and
specific to its time and place, “New York 2007”. As already demonstrated on
Stanko’s “Lontano”, these are players extremely adept at creating songs in real
time.

(all info courtesy of ECM)