# Live review: Joe Lovano featuring the Marcin Wasilewski Trio at our Europe Jazz Blues Festival 2025: Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2025/07/31/live-review-joe-lovano-featuring-the-marcin-wasilewski-trio-at-our-europe-jazz-blues-festival-2025-photos/
- Published: 2025-07-31T20:55:10+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**EU welcomed legendary saxophonist Joe Lovano featuring the Marcin Wasilewski Trio
at Notre-Dame de Leffe Abbey, Dinant, Belgium on July 28, 2025, at our Europe Jazz
Blues Festival.**

Joe Lovano and his Polish conspirators from the Marcin Wasilewski trio are endowed
with 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.

![Marcin Wasilewski trio and Joe Lovano](https://i0.wp.com/marlbank.net/wp-content/
uploads/2025/04/rsz_2845_joe_lovano_marcin_wasilewski_trio_pf1.jpg?fit=1024%2C583&
ssl=1)

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.

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 seamless chemistry
is more apparent than ever on Homage.

Joe Lovano, that giant American elder of jazz reeds-playing, nowadays seems – rather
like the equally eminent saxophone master Charles Lloyd – to be simmering all his
decades of timeless tunes and exquisite passing phrases down to essences.

![Joe Lovano / The Marcin Wasilewski Trio at JAZZMI Festival article @ All  About
Jazz](https://i0.wp.com/s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/media/medium/8/3/b/9013b9b9e44a1420d0e0512bd19a0.
jpeg?w=640&ssl=1)

The 72-year-old Ohio-born sax star and occasional drummer’s partners here are Polish
pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s collectively freethinking trio – Homage’s shape was 
formed on extensive tours with them, and a week in 2023 at New York’s Village Vanguard
club that acted as an impromptu rehearsal.

Song-rooted American jazz-making and give-and-go European free-jazz have become 
intertwined within Lovano’s later-life soundworld. Wasilewski’s compatriot Zbigniew
Seifert’s Love in the Garden is reworked as a rapturous tenor-sax ballad with every
soft horn outbreath embraced in silvery keyboard streams. Lovano’s Golden Horn evokes
the iconic four-note hook of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme before his tenor sax
eases in on hints and fragments, then sweeps into fast linear post-bop. There’s 
a driving, McCoy Tyneresque solo from Wasilewski and Lovano switches to hand drums,
animatedly joining percussionist Michal Miskiewicz – but there’s an exhilarating
surprise when the leader whoops back in on the soprano-sax-like Hungarian tárogató.

The title track’s opening short-burst figures turn to unaccompanied and free-collective
jamming before an enchanting percussion coda; Giving Thanks is a kaleidoscope of
figures on unaccompanied tenor sax; and This Side – Catville, an album highlight,
deftly balances a snappy short-phrase melody and rolling free-groove. The recording
session apparently captured five hours of these exchanges, so with luck a second
volume of this hearteningly harmonious and spontaneous music-making is already in
the pipeline.

![May be an image of Camogli and text](https://scontent.fevn6-3.fna.fbcdn.net/v/
t39.30808-6/525512681_122167575398428851_8503487458543935811_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb
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OLdqcZdKROWLlRfJ4&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fevn6-3.fna&_nc_gid=_Iqfw7ObpTqfihfWwLRkOQ&
oh=00_AfRmYjcQgq0P1qAd1Ld4H6ry2niC1wag0FthAcJSv9AVgQ&oe=68918228)

The Marcin Wasilewski Trio the musical goal is to savor the moment by way of subtly
shifting dynamics and delicately enriched harmonies. This Polish threesome has mastered
the strategy, creating soundscapes that are right for our age of virus-induced anxiety:
edgy restlessness yearning for a refined pensiveness.

Enter, tenor sax master Joe Lovano, the trio’s latest disc. Lovano is a veteran 
of various musical settings over a long career. His voice is adaptable — but always
distinctive. No matter his musical surroundings, there is never any doubt that it
is Lovano you are hearing. He can shake things up aplenty, but here he fits in with
the program — he maintains a mostly gentle touch.

The group finds fertile common ground on two takes of Carla Bley’s “Vashkar,” a 
tune many musicians have found intriguing over the years. Lovano’s coloristic expressiveness
contrasts effectively with the piece’s dark drama, which is well served by Slawomir
Kurkiewicz’s bass work. Foreboding lurks in passages that nimbly interweave shadows
and light. Rhythms percolate underneath — and they resonate mystery.

![May be an image of 7 people, saxophone, Stari Most and text](https://scontent.
fevn6-3.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/525570045_122167575782428851_9006432893771832476_n.
jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=tw83_djooj8Q7kNvwFZm-t9&_nc_oc=AdnosGHlJl8a02wToGcDYtjmvsLU5SwiJdLt5x-
UreDvfSZMM7i-McDg8HjjFWXcWX0wfU19rzZn17NGgtzl3Qe5&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fevn6-
3.fna&_nc_gid=4D7Joqw2aMYiMh9KzluQvg&oh=00_AfR8MRNbHjTOtaDtU3E-BUq4atgV5xlJfpqigxFbsh5n4g&
oe=68919B2E)

“Cadenza,” a group composition, is another strong piece. A piano/bass dialogue sets
an edgy tone. Joined by sax and drums (Michal Miskiewicz), the foursome heats up,
steaming the proceedings into what sounds like controlled chaos. But the arrival
of a reflective piano passage cools things off — leaving at least this listener 
wishing for a bit more agitation.

Pianist Wasilewski serves up the feisty with his “L’Amour Fou,” a playful romp written
with Lovano in mind. After the trio revs things up, the saxman enters for an evocative
excursion over a tumbling vamp, sounding like a wayward cosmopolitan lost amid a
slew of upbeat romantic reveries.

The leader’s “Old Hat” ends the disc on a traditional note. Lovano adds slathers
of classic melancholy to a piece that tells a wistful tale.

Lovano has now played quite extensively with Wasilewski across Europe and the first
thought that struck me as they were playing was that this is now ‘a band’ – rather
than Joe Lovano ‘sitting in’ or Wasilewski ‘supporting’. The last time I saw them
a few years ago that was definitely the case – tonight it’s immediately apparent
this is now a proper quartet.

![No photo description available.](https://scontent.fevn6-5.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-
6/526439394_122167811606428851_235705893982383655_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid
=bd9a62&_nc_ohc=tf_iDAqJSkAQ7kNvwGW1hsb&_nc_oc=AdnwZT15mtYDboiaNFJHVFCHsu61tatwm2YDffAPusNzwPfzQu-
a_ZoETI9bZ56u2ayRURdHX_V8FykepX3u4GFr&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fevn6-5.fna&_nc_gid
=9vRmivS3Ywk0CVi8in_woQ&oh=00_AfQgnYlvi9jKHtNMv4NJmPbQB9Gbs-jlcn2M_ih7OoMXAw&oe=
6891B49B)

Wasilewski pulls the strings in the band and his soloing was some of the best I’ve
heard anywhere. Long incredible passages of improvisation with Slawomir Kurkiewicz(
Bass) and Michael Miskiewicz (drums) telepathically right there with him underpinning
his changes of mood or direction seamlessly.

During Wasilewski’s solos Lovano kept a low profile behind the drums deep into the
music until he sprung into life and delivered his own fiery contributions.

Whatever Wasilewski played Joe Lovano equalled it and the duel between them was 
fantastic to listen to, the pair always feeding off each other, trading ideas and
pushing the music to the limit. Wasilewski’s trio are brilliant and now with Lovano
in the band they really have taken the music to a higher level.

**By Olivia Peevas**

![May be an image of 1 person and Eltz Castle](https://scontent.fevn6-3.fna.fbcdn.
net/v/t39.30808-6/525243667_122167574924428851_7031531210633628187_n.jpg?_nc_cat
=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=vS6d10tGD08Q7kNvwEOci3k&_nc_oc=AdkLPlV1Y1QWmWsxHGQodPwZdUyxkbs13pXqsUCNvNP_B63cCZ68PqTTQchLYmJsgRRRqPrgDaafIWtiRIDdVAAv&
_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fevn6-3.fna&_nc_gid=eTPulNkrEg3zF5RnQAX9QA&oh=00_AfRntkVcQ9QRg2YPhjm7kqVEgLrIM9tdiGDbklXDS0_y8g&
oe=68919882)

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