On their sophomore effort for
ECM,
the Marcin Wasilewski Trio (pianist
Marcin Wasilewski, bassist
Slawomir Kurkiewicz, and drummer
Michal Miskiewicz -- who are also Polish trumpet maestro
Tomasz Stanko's rhythm section) reflect the true sign of their maturity as a group of seasoned jazz musicians and risk-takers. Their debut album, simply called
Trio, merely reflected to American and Western European audiences the wealth of talent, vision, and discipline that Polish and Eastern Europe's audiences had known for over a decade. (The group recorded five previous albums in its native country between 1993 and 2004.) They came together in 1991 as teenagers:
Wasilewski and
Kurkiewicz were only 16 and had already been playing together for a year when they met up with
Miskiewicz. In 1993 they began playing behind
Stanko, and eventually became his recording group as well. They were first heard on his 2001 album
The Soul of Things, as well as his subsequent
ECM outings,
Suspended Night and
Lontano. But all of this is history and history only. It doesn't begin to tell of the magic and mystery found in this beautiful album. There are four
Wasilewski compositions in this ten-cut set. They range from the lovely songlike opener,
"The First Touch," with its romantic melody that suggests
Bill Evans' late
"Song for Evan" period, as well as elliptical European improvisers like
Bobo Stenson. But it's that inherent sense of dimension and space that is in all the best Polish jazz that makes this is such a stellar tune. The utterly lyrical brush and cymbal work by
Miskiewicz and present yet uncluttered bassline of
Kurkiewicz allow the full range of
Wasilewski's reach from melodic invention to gently ambiguous modal exploration to come to the fore. The group's reading of
Ennio Morricone's
"Cinema Paradiso" underscores the deep and inseparable relationship between Polish jazz and the cinema that has existed since the collaborations between director
Roman Polanski and
Stanko's first boss, pianist and composer
Krzysztof Komeda. The sense of dynamic that the trio goes for on this piece is perhaps less forcefully pronounced than the composer's, but it is almost a reading of its other side, where the brooding aspects of the original give way to something fuller and more picaresque, while allowing its sense of nostalgia and memory free rein inside the narrative of the tune.
This is followed by one of the set's true highlights, a killer jazz reading of
Prince's
"Diamonds and Pearls," led by a tough little three-note bass intro by
Kurkiewicz; he proceeds to underscore every note in the melody with a fill. It's difficult to know for the first couple of minutes exactly what the trio is getting at here, but just before the extrapolation of the harmony and its inversion it becomes clear and it gains a more aurally recognizable quality. The tune is soulful and romantic, and contains all of the inherent lyricism that
Prince employs in its chord structure, adding just a little of jazz's sense of adventure in the final third of the tune and wrapping it all together into something new. This is a worthy interpretation if there ever was one. Interestingly, the trio tackles some tunes by
ECM standard-bearers as well. There are innovative, challenging, and very fresh-sounding versions of
Gary Peacock's
"Vignette," Carla Bley's
"King Korn" (which retains all of its knotty humor and then adds some of its own), and
Stanko's gorgeous and enduring
"Balladyna"-- the title cut from his own
ECM debut back in the 1970s. Three longer
Wasilewski compositions --
"The Cat," the title track, and another crack at the relationship between Polish film and jazz in
"The Young and the Cinema" -- dominate the second half of the record by giving the band a chance to really stretch and fly. All of these tunes, but particularly the last one, reveal the trio members' ability to swing effortlessly together no matter how complex the music gets as it moves from post-bop to angular impressionistic jazz. The final cut is a muted improvisation that is, if anything, all too brief. This is terrific second effort by a band that, despite the fact that its members have been together for 17 years, is only really coming into its own in the present moment. ~ Thom Jurek