Homage Joe Lovano & Marcin Wasilewski Trio

• 1 Love in the Garden 04:13
• 2 Golden Horn 10:20
• 3 Homage 08:00
• 4 Giving Thanks 02:25
• 5 This Side - Catville 12:00
• 6 Projection 02:03
• Total Runtime 39:01

Info for Homage

Joe Lovano and his Polish conspirators from the Marcin Wasilewski trio are in an especially adventurous spirit on their second joint endeavour for ECM. Building on the lyrical strengths that inhabited the group’s previous recording (Arctic Riff, 2020), on Homage the quartet moreover investigates the type of free-flowing interplay and expansive passages of improvisation that have become a staple in Lovano’s ventures with his trio tapestry group and elsewhere. The album was recorded at a studio session in the midst of the group’s Village Vanguard residency in late Autumn 2023, revealing fluent structures as they’re being developed. A rare sense of expressivity and spiritual affinity grace the session.

Clocking in at over ten minutes each, two long-form compositions and the title track “Homage” – all Lovano originals – make up the bedrock of the album and find the players at their most exploratory, with Joe frequently swapping out his tenor and tárogató for a variety of percussion instruments - “Just a handful of gongs and some light percussion sounds,” notes Lovano. “It’s so nice to communicate with Michael on drums – in the studio it felt like we were one!”

Reigniting the spark in the studio was no difficult task for the quartet, as they’d toured extensively since their first album. “We connected with Joe right from the start,” the trio recalls. “It was natural. He’s the kind of musician who jumps into the moment and plays along with whatever he hears, which matches how we approach music. Touring together over the years only made this connection stronger, both on and off stage. His openness and spontaneity allowed real musical dialogue to happen.”

Joe originally wrote “Homage”, the title track, for the 2023 ECM celebration at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, celebrating Manfred Eicher’s 80th birthday alongside A-listers Dave Holland, Anouar Brahem, Ralph Towner, Norma Winstone and many more. There, Lovano performed the composition in quartet with Avishai Cohen, Tigran Hamasyan and Nasheet Waits. “The piece is dedicated to Manfred and the label’s history. I grew up listening to ECM recordings, because those were the cats that I wanted to play with, and it turned out to be the music that gave me a lot of direction.” In putting the score together, Lovano “used no notes – just feelings written in a sequence of events”. Not strictly tonal, Lovano and Marcin’s trio shift between different keys throughout the song, alternating pulse and rhythm in the process and revealing Lovano’s deep connection with the music of conductor and composer Gunther Schuller, and by extension of Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell.

“Golden Horn”, one of the two lengthier pieces, is a modal meditation that finds the tides shifting smoothly between the players. Miskiewicz’s pulse is elegantly uncompromising, as he and Kurkiewicz on bass keep a steady backdrop against Wasilewski and Lovano’s dauntless explorations through the bars. The interaction is reminiscent of what the trio used to sound like accompanying the great late Tomasz Stanko on the trumpeters ECM recordings in the early 2000s (the archival live recording from 2004, September Night was just released in 2024).

Even more spontaneity and freedom grace the twelve-minute cut “This Side – Catville”, as the quartet embarks on a freewheeling blowout through swinging bars and again modal harmonic shifts – exemplary of each players heightened intuition for responsive interplay. Wasilewski’s keyboard flights move like ripples in the water, his soft-spoken action shaping an effective contrast against Lovano’s sharply overblown and melodically intricate jabs. “We really love to follow Joe’s spontaneous free approach in playing,” says Marcin, also speaking for his bandmates. “But it’s always rooted in the tradition at the same time. Combining these two elements in our own sense of music became more expressive recently.”

The group’s pass at “Love In The Garden”, a composition by the Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert, embellishes the evocative ballad with fluid harmonies, wrapped in a rubato pulse. Marcin: “It was a spontaneous choice – no discussion about how or what to play. We just went for it, and the music unfolded naturally.” It’s a surprising and tasteful take on the rather electric original from the 70s, but, as Joe notes, “the thing is to not play something the way it looks but to try and create it as you play, you know. And playing ballads, that’s the heart and soul, really, of the music.”

Improvised miniatures complete a programme that proves Wasilewski and his trio cohorts to be the ideal match for Lovano’s singular musings and the group’s flawless chemistry is more apparent than ever on Homage. Recorded at the Van Gelder studio in New Jersey and mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich, the album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

The music throughout the week was unfolding every night in a very special way. So when we went into the studio, we were able to capture an exceptional, concentrated five-hour moment. – Joe Lovano

Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone
Marcin Wasilewski, piano
Slawomir Kurkiewicz, double bass
Michal Miskiewicz, drums

Joe Lovano
Grammy-winning saxophonist, composer and producer Joe Lovano is fearless in finding new modes of artistic expression. With a Grammy win for his 52nd Street Themes and 14 other nominations, he has won DownBeat Magazine’s Critics and Readers Polls countless times as Tenor Saxophonist, Musician of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year and Triple Crowns from DownBeat. He has also received numerous awards from JazzTimes and the Jazz Journalists Association for Tenor Saxophone, Album of the Year and Musician of the Year.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 29, 1952 he attended the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston where years later he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate. Since 2001 he has held the Gary Burton Chair in Jazz Performance and is a founding faculty member since 2009 of the Global Jazz Institute at Berklee directed by Danilo Pérez. He is a guest lecturer at New York University’s Jazz Program, Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music as well as Clinician at Universities around the globe.

From 1991 through 2016, Lovano released an unprecedented 25 records as a leader for the historic Blue Note Records. Joe Lovano Quartet: Classic! Live at Newport featuring Hank Jones was recorded in 2005 and released in 2016 to critical acclaim. In 2019, Lovano released his debut album as a bandleader on ECM Records, Trio Tapestry, with Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi. Over the next few years, Lovano saw the release of three additional ECM Records albums: ROMA, a collaboration with Enrico Rava; Arctic Riff, a special guest appearance with the Marcin Wasilewski Trio; and the sophomore release from Lovano’s Trio Tapestry, Garden of Expression. In 2021, Lovano released Other Worlds, his third album with Sound Prints, a quintet he co-leads with trumpeter Dave Douglas. The next year brought a collaboration with guitarist Jakob Bro, Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian. Most recently, Lovano released his third Trio Tapestry recording entitled, Our Daily Bread.

In addition, composer Mark Anthony Turnage wrote a Concerto for Saxophone and Chamber Orchestra for Joe called “A Man Descending” which has been performed globally and Maestro Michael Abene orchestrated an album of all-Lovano originals called Symphonica for the WDR Symphonic Orchestra and Big Band, which was released on Blue Note and received a Grammy nomination.

Joe has performed and recorded with a long list of jazz greats including Woody Herman, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Mel Lewis, Bob Brookmeyer, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Tony Bennett, Abbey Lincoln, Charlie Haden, John Scofield, Gunther Schuller, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Ed Blackwell, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, Hank Jones, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, Dave Douglas, Judi Silvano, Ravi Coltrane, Chucho Valdés, Ornette Coleman, Diana Krall, and many others. Joe has created an extensive body of work for his own ensembles including strings, woodwinds, his horn-rich Nonet, the Classic Quartet, Trio Tapestry, and more.

Joe Lovano continues to explore new horizons within the world of music as a soloist, bandleader and composer.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio
with Marcin Wasilewski, piano, (born 1975), Sławomir Kurkiewicz, double- bass, (born 1975) and Michał Miśkiewicz (born 1977), drums - is one of the brightest stars of the Polish jazz scene, recognised for their unique talent in blending tradition with contemporary sound. The trio has achieved international recognition for their exceptional talent and ability to captivate audiences, leaving a lasting impression with their powerful and emotionally charged performance with depth and sheer musicality. In 2024, the band celebrates 30 years of playing together in an unchanged line-up.

For the past three remarkable decades, the Marcin Wasilewski Trio has graced the world of jazz with their extraordinary talent and unwavering commitment to musical excellence, becoming synonymous with innovation and storytelling through their music. Their remarkable journey includes collaborations with jazz luminaries like Tomasz Stanko, Joe Lovano, Charles Lloyd and more, along with the release of seven exceptional albums under the ECM Records label.

The band combines the grand tradition of the challenging piano trio tenet and creates their own distinct sound in doing so. It is also one of the most consistently developing bands of the Polish music scene, and one that is very open to inspiration from the surrounding environment. The Marcin Wasilewski Trio is considered one of the most acclaimed and unique jazz formations of its generation, and it has garnered recognition in its native Poland as well as abroad.

Trio’s current history goes back even further, to the year 1990. It was then that the Simple Acoustic Trio was founded by a group of students from a music high school in Koszalin. Their debut performance would come a year later, and the band quickly began to garner awards across Poland. In 1993, the young percussionist Michał Miśkiewicz (the son of renowned Polish saxophonist Henryk Miśkiewicz) joined the Simple Acoustic Trio and since then the group plays together untouched by any personal disturbances.

Their very first record entitled “Komeda” came out in 1995, published by the Kraków based Gowi Records label. It became one of the most widely commented debuts of the year. An homage to the work of Krzysztof Komeda, it consisted entirely of his compositions. The critics and audience alike didn’t fail to hear in the recordings much more than mere interpretations of the historic pieces of Polish jazz. The reviews hailed the trio a creative continuation of this history, and one of the biggest promises of the Polish jazz scene.

Their music soon stirred the curiosity of Tomasz Stańko, the legendary Polish trumpet player. In the late 1990s, Stańko was searching for a new quartet squad, one that would allow him to pursue the kind of work he did with Bobo Stenson, Anders Jormin and Tony Oxley. The encounter with Tomasz Stańko turned out to be a turning point in the trio’s career. Stańko was quoted as saying that „In the entire history of Polish jazz there was no group like this one”.

The cooperation with Tomasz Stańko was officially launched between 1999 and 2000, and it was preceeded by occasional concert collaboration between Stańko and Wasilewski. The Simple Acoustic Trio had gained a mentor in Stańko and cooperated with him as a working band. This cooperation soon lead to recording with one of the world’s leading labels, the Munich-based ECM.

Together with Stańko they recorded three albums with the ECM: Soul of Things (2002), Suspended Night (2004) and Lontano (2006). They also made three concert tours across the US, performing in some of America’s best jazz stages: Blues Alley in Washington, Merkin Hall and Birdland in New York. Stańko and the trio also played at the San Fransisco Jazz Festival and the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle.

Although the musicians were very actively engaged in making music together, and their career was gaining speed, the actual name Simple Acoustic Trio was less and less heard of. The last album they recorded under the old name was Habanera, released by the Not Two Records label in Kraków in May, 2000.

The musicians would return to the stage as an independent trio five years later, and it was a splendid beginning. Trio’s first album under the ECM Records entitled Trio and after since its release in 2005, two more albums followed: January (2008), and Faithfull (2011), both of which were also released by ECM. Faithfull gained the status of a double platinum record and it was a huge artistic success. In 2014 ECM released their fourth album Spark Of Life with Swedish tenorist Joakim Milder. Trio continued their journey with ECM with remarkable Live album (released in 2018), to follow up with another quartet recording Arctic Riff with American tenor giant Joe Lovano (released in 2020), with whom they toured in 2021 and 2022 in Europe. In January 2022 in Poland’s leading jazz magazine’s Jazz Forum “Jazz Top” - The Annual Readers Poll for 2021 the double- tour (the Arctic Riff Tour and En attendant Tour) was voted the Best Concert Event of the Year 2021. The most recent Trio’s album En attendant was recorded a day before the (Arctic Riff) session with Maestro Lovano, and was released by ECM in June 2021.

Booklet for Homage