Tomasz Stanko: Songs

A retrospective included with the August 2022 issue of Musica Jazz, tracing the distinct, bittersweet trumpet voice of the late Polish master across a slew of ECM recordings. The title Songs seems almost provocatively plain for an artist whose music could turn breath into a philosophical emergency. His trumpet worried at a composition’s hidden seam until grief entered the room. Grainy at the edges and luminous within, that sound belongs to modern jazz history because it made European experiences audible without reducing the continent to a regional accent. Stanko emerged from the Polish scene surrounding Krzysztof Komeda, carried its intelligence into free improvisation, and forged a late style in which lyricism became moral concentration. His phrases could arrive half-erased, yet their structural integrity was unparalleled. That voice enters at full velocity with “First Song” from Balladyna (ECM 1071), Stanko’s first recording as a leader for ECM. Dave Holland produces the hard swing…