Jazz Articles about Tomasz Stańko

About Tomasz Stańko

Album Review

Tomasz Stanko Quartet: September Night

Read "September Night" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 14, 2024

How sorely Tomasz Stańko is missed. When he passed in 2018, his career had spanned practically the entire lifetime of homegrown Polish jazz, kicking off approximately with the Dave Brubeck Quartet's seminal tour of Poland in 1958, three years after the ban on jazz had been lifted by the country's ruling Communist Party. For Stańko, aged 16, Brubeck's tour was a Damascene moment, as it was for a whole generation of Polish musicians. Stanko was still resident in Poland when ...

Album Review

Tomasz Stańko: September Night

Read "September Night" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 29, 2024

Once one finds oneself sucked into the fervent undertow piloting the live, previously unreleased September Night it is too late: The boat has left shore. Beginning with bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz's full throated rumble, “Hermento's Mood" spins off into fable somewhere around the one minute forty mark, when pianist Marcin Wasilewski begins his warm, welcoming symmetries and the band gathers steam.. Polish trumpeter/composer Tomasz Stańko (1942-2018) was a poet on his golden instrument. Metaphoric but never academic, ...

Album Review

Francois Carrier Ensemble featuring Mat Maneri /Tomasz Stańko / Gary Peacock / Michel Lambert: Openness

Read "Openness" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 6, 2024

Openness waited nearly two decades on a shelf (ok, probably on a hard drive) before being released for our listening pleasure. Recorded on May 5 & 6, 2006 at the Théâtre La Chapelle in Montréal, Canada, these three precious discs document a meeting between Canadian saxophonist François Carrier and Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko. It is the Polish label Fundacja Sluchaj to thank for this release and the prior disc Unwalled (2022), with Carrier being joined by Alexander von Schlippenbach, John ...

Book Review

Desperado: An Autobiography

by Andrew Hunter
August 4, 2023

Desperado: an Autobiography Tomasz Stanko 345 Pages ISBN: # 978 1 80050 222 2 Equinox Publishing Ltd2010 Tomasz Stanko; let us begin at the end. When Stanko died of lung cancer in 2018 aged 76, he left behind him a discography of forty records as a leader as well as numerous others as a sideman. He was a recording artist of international significance with an established position on the roster of ECM Records, ...

Book Review

Tomasz Stańko: Desperado, An Autobiography

by Ian Patterson
September 30, 2022

Tomasz Stańko: Desperado, An Autobiography Tomas Stańko with Rafał Księżyk 358 Pages ISBN-13 978 180050 2222 Equinox Publishing 2022 Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko packed a lot into his 76 years before succumbing to lung cancer in 2018. A lot of music, most of it of lasting value, and a lot of living. In fact, given his numerous substance addictions, it is a wonder that he was quite so prolific, and that he lived ...

Book Review

The History Of European Jazz: The Music, Musicians And Audience in Context

by Ian Patterson
December 28, 2018

The History Of European Jazz: The Music, Musicians And Audience In Context Various authors/Edited by Francesco Martinelli 741 Pages ISBN: 13 978 1 78179 446 3 Equinox Publishing 2018 It's taken some time, about a century in fact, but finally, thanks chiefly to editor and jazz historian Francesco Martinelli of Siena Jazz, the first comprehensive, pan-European history of jazz sees the light of day. And what stories they are too -complex, colorful ...

Album Review

Tomasz Stańko New York Quartet: December Avenue

Read "December Avenue" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 2, 2017

The elder statesman of modern Polish jazz, trumpeter and composer Tomasz Stańko has more than a forty year history with ECM. Dating back to his 1976 label debut, Balladyna, Stańko sounds to have arrived fully-formed, and in the company of Dave Holland and Finnish percussionist Edward Vesala. Stańko's trademark atmospheric and cerebral style is fully intact on December Avenue, his twelth album for Manfred Eicher's label. Stańko's New York Quartet includes ECM artists David Virelles, whose Mbókò ...