Last night I went to the Royal Northern College of Music to hear the Tomasz Stanko Quartet, currently touring the UK. I have one of Stanko’s albums, Leosia – very highly regarded – on which basis I was looking forward to the gig.
It exceeded all my expectations. It was one of the most fantastic evenings of jazz I’ve had in recent years, and that covers a fair number. Apart from Stanko himself whose trumpet playing was absorbing, inventive and exuberant by turns, what made the evening so outstanding was the pianist, Marcin Wasilewski. I don’t have the language of technical music description to be able to tell you why and how he was so good, but this guy is sensational. Whether or not that’s already been picked up amongst the jazz cognoscenti I also don’t know, not keeping up with jazz magazines and such; but he’s got to be headed for the very top. Brad Mehldau – yup; Esbjorn Svensson – yup; Wasilewski will be there with the very best. If Stanko himself hadn’t been so good, you’d have worried that the veteran trumpeter was being upstaged by his young piano player.
I gathered from a bloke sitting next to me that, separately from Stanko, Wasilewski and the bassist and drummer, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michal Miskiewicz, form the Simple Acoustic Trio. I’ll be taking steps to get hold of any albums they’ve made.
Here’s the rest of their schedule in the UK. If you have the chance, don’t miss it, not for anything.