In this day and age with so much top jazz out there you need to be convinced and convinced again to really believe in something.
First port of call is obviously to check out the tracks streaming. It’s the most instant of formats. Jazz is the most instantaneous and freest of musical forms. There’s a match.
I come to this album as someone who has followed all these musicians for years. I’ve met Marcin and the trio members a few times and heard them live but not for years, sometimes on their own, sometimes with Tomasz Stańko (1942-2018) who I knew better, hanging out with him a few times in different places and going round to his flat on Rozbrat street near the Vistula interviewing him for a piece that ran in The Wire years ago.
So how does Joe Lovano fit in? He’s obviously not a stand in for Stańko given his own incredible work down the years. He’s gone more avant garde than in his Blue Note heyday. I haven’t seen him live that much – the first time I think was with Paul Motian and Bill Frisell at the Barbican and then with his band US5 featuring Esperanza Spalding at Ronnie Scott’s in 2009 before she herself became famous. The gig with Motian I enjoyed more and liked his Blue Note recordings which are less free form as a general comment than what he does nowadays and more recently his work in Trio Tapestry with Marilyn Crispell.
Just 6 tracks here recorded at the most famous jazz recording studio globally Van Gelder’s in Englewood Cliffs in November 2023. The engineer is Maureen Sickler and the mix is Manfred Eicher’s. It doesn’t sound like a typical ECM album as much as usual. Well maybe a bit. ECM doesn’t put that many records out these days recorded in America. It’s more often using studios in France or Switzerland nowadays.
Check out this quartet’s earlier work found on 2020’s formidable Arctic Riff.
The band had been playing at the Village Vanguard. The homage in the title Joe Lo in the notes explains: ”is a dedication to all of the people in our lives that inspired us to be ourselves without hesitation.”
As well as sax Lovano plays taragato and wields gongs (on the very mindful ‘Projection’ at the end). He’s quite John Surman like in his intensity on the title track.
Tunes are Lovano’s mainly – Wasilewski’s most absorbing soloing is on ‘This Side (Catville).’
We reckon Wasilewski, 49, who is from the far north of Poland is Europe’s best jazz pianist for 3 reasons: massive technique, intuitive feel, interior expressive interpretative range.
”Proof?”
2021’s En Attendant.
Homage is the kind of album you end up in a trance when you begin to listen. It’s magnificant. The album opens with a beautiful version of Zbigniew Seifert’s ‘Love in the Garden’ which was on the 1976 MPS album Man of the Light that had Cecil McBee, Billy Hart and Jasper van ‘t Hof joining the Polish violin icon on that track. Linger long – in a word, let’s not cheapen this by adding yard upon yard of superlatives, let’s just say Homage contains inspiration you just can’t in any way aspire to.
MORE READING
- Immy Churchill, Songs That Shaped Me, Vortex Downstairs, ****
- “It’s about the exchange”: Tom Challenger and Evan Parker unite
- Anthony Joseph, The Ark, Heavenly Sweetness ****
- Marvin Muoneké, Mark Lockheart, Gary Crosby, Alex Webb and Winston Clifford – Cadogan Hall **** recommended
- Andrea Di Biase’s Oltremare, Vortex ****
