Marcin Wasilewski Trio "En attendant" @ Philharmonie Luxembourg / Jazz club
Schedule
Wed Feb 08 2023 at 07:30 pm
Location
Philharmonie Luxembourg | Luxembourg, LU
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«This project delivers a beautiful, well-paced suite of tunes that seems quintessentially the trio.» (London Jazz News)“There’s a galaxy of piano trios in today’s jazz universe,” the BBC Music Magazine has noted, “but few shine as bright as Marcin Wasilewski’s”.
The Trio is the undisputed star of Polish jazz and for years has been recognized by international critics as one of the most outstanding and the most unique jazz formations of its generation, while enjoying the recognition of jazz fans around the world.
As M.W.Trio they have already recorded seven albums for ECM, three albums with the late Tomasz Stanko in his Quartet, as well as a number of other collaborations. On Trio’s seventh ECM album the multifaceted Polish group illuminates a characteristically wide span of music. Fluidity is the hallmark, allied to the deep listening made possible by more than a quarter-century of collaborative music-making by Trio members.
“Their years together have resulted in an ensemble with an utterly symbiotic creative flow,” observed Don Heckman in the Los Angeles Times, when the Marcin Wasilewski Trio was first making its presence felt on the international jazz scene.
The improvisational communication among the players has continued to deepen over the years, along with their range of creative options. En attendant pays testimony to the musicians’ far-reaching imagination and to the ways in which the group’s lucid musical language can integrate influence from disparate sources.
Recorded just prior to their Arctic Riff collaboration with Joe Lovano, En attendant finds Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz, and Michal Miskiewicz in a thoughtful, exploratory mood. The multifaceted Polish group illuminates a characteristically wide span of music, the scope extending from Bach to group improvisation. On En attendant, collectively created pieces are juxtaposed with Wasilewski’s malleable “Glimmer of Hope”, Carla Bley’s timeless “Vashkar”, The Doors’ hypnotic “Riders on the Storm” and a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, transformed in the context. Fluidity is the hallmark, allied to the deep listening made possible by more than a quarter-century of collaborative music-making.
The tripartite “In Motion” offers the most thorough account yet of the trio’s capacity for finding forms in the moment, shaping and developing musical structures with a running sense of architectural proportion. “In Motion Part I” gives way to Variation 25 from the Goldberg Variations, a reminder that all roads lead to Bach, eventually. The trio’s take on the minor key aria gently probes its atmosphere of dark passion and encircles its exquisite melody.
Paul Bley’s Footloose! recording of 1963 was where many musicians first learned about Carla Bley as a composer. As Marcin Wasilewski recently noted it “opened the gates to something undiscovered”, including the inexhaustible mysteries of tunes like “Vashkar,” which has become one of the pieces the trio likes to revisit, always finding something new inside it.
Pop and rock cover versions have also long been part of the trio’s story. Earlier recordings have found the group re-contextualising Björk’s “Hyperballad”, Prince’s “Diamonds and Pearls”, the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” and more. The Doors’ iconic “Riders on the Storm” now joins the list, in a subtly unconventional arrangement. While the rhythmic feel here hews to a bubbling groove close to the original, bassist Slawomir Kurkewicz is to the fore for much of the tune, soloing inside the form, while Wasilewski mines the harmonies.
Marcin’s rubato ballad “Glimmer of Hope” moves like waves, floating its glistening motive through changing tonalities over Michal Miskiewicz’s detailed cymbals and drums.
En attendant was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in August 2019 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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Where is it happening?
Philharmonie Luxembourg, 1 Place de l'Europe,Luxembourg, LuxembourgEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
