Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Song for Sarah
The late Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko (d. 2018, age 76) had long been a fixture at Elsewhere for his elegant albums on the ECM label (with a regular quartet, which has an estimable career outside of that) and it was a pleasure to interview him in 2009.
His album Lontano has been a special favourite but every album we've heard has had something to recommend it, whether it be a whispery tone like classic acoustic Miles Davis or exploring material which shows his European classic traditions, a frostiness that came from his background in Poland in the 1960s.
Stanko was one of the great innovators in post-war European jazz.
Here, on a previously unreleased 2004 live recording with his longtime quartet, they were just a year away from that classic Lontano.
This is sophisticated, but also robust, jazz at the interface of fragile melodic playing and free improvisation, in places lifting off from mid-Sixties Miles Davis lyricism into dynamic, adventurous territory.
An impressive and unexpected bonus from his finest creative period.
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You can hear this album at Spotify here
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