# Concert review: Journey through jazz history: Joe Lovano featuring The Marcin Wasilewski Trio at Jazz Open Stuttgart: Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2025/08/24/concert-review-journey-through-jazz-history-joe-lovano-featuring-the-marcin-wasilewski-trio-at-jazz-open-stuttgart-photos/
- Published: 2025-08-24T12:14:01+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Our big EU Jazz Blues Festival has just ended, quite recently, on August 17, but
we have already started our concert activities every Saturday. **

Follow our concerts, enjoy and live jazz and blues.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.jazzreportagen.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Joe_Lovano_0945_C_Rainer_Ortag.
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**Enthusiastic audience at Sparda World**

A visibly cheerful and relaxed Joe Lovano takes the stage, along with his band, 
which isn’t exactly a mere backing band for a saxophonist who, given his stature,
his creative period, and, of course, his work, is perhaps on the verge of legendary
status.

Lovano steps up, plays a soulful, warmly shimmering intro on his saxophone, and 
sets us in the mood for jazz.

And that, in addition to the musicians’ joy at being here in Stuttgart at Jazzopen
for the band’s tour kickoff, is the second message: This is—not about pigeonholing,
but rather about providing a “rough” orientation—a jazz in which the great American
jazz tradition meets an exquisitely presented style of increasingly self-confident
European jazz, the Polish trio of Marcin Wasilelewski.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.jazzreportagen.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Joe_Lovano_0938_C_Rainer_Ortag.
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**Dreamy Groove at the Golden Horn**

A whole series of pieces that found open ears and a rather enthusiastic audience
at Sparda World is music that can be found on “Homage,” the current album (released
on the ECM label) by Lovano and the Wasilewski Trio.

Music, compositions, improvisations that flow into one another, transitioning from
one mood to the next, sometimes ending abruptly.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.jazzreportagen.com/wp-content/uploads/Joe_Lovano_1071_C_Rainer_Ortag.
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Certainly one of, if not the, highlight of the concert was a kind of suite, introduced
by almost rattling, tinny gongs, on which Joe Lovano, with his saxophone slung over
his shoulder, set something in motion that aroused curiosity, developed a pull, 
and then increasingly culminated in a deep groove.

It’s always difficult to “take advantage of the competition,” but at this stage 
of the concert, thinking of Coltrane or Pharaoh Sanders is a nod to these great 
masters.

‘Golden Horn,’ the title of this piece, evokes both the splendor of this historic
waterway in Constantinople and the sound of Lovano’s saxophone, shimmering in the
evening sun, inviting and carrying his fellow players into this eternal groove where
Asia, Europe, Africa, and perhaps even the world, can meet.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.jazzreportagen.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Joe_Lovano_1080_C_Rainer_Ortag.
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One wishes they would keep playing forever, never to stop…

**Journey through jazz history**

In fact, it continues for quite a while, although no longer in that magical rhythm
that promises eternity, but rather in a lively, varied sequence of different moods
and styles.

There are very free passages in which the free jazz of the early years raises its
finger (‘don’t get too comfortable…!’), or bebop-like themes in which the class 
of this band improvises confidently, spontaneously, and full of ideas, playing closely
together, whether in duos or as a full quartet.

Sometimes “the master” withdraws, sits down for a while, as if to listen to the 
music of the also magnificent trio around Polish pianist Macin Wasilewski.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.jazzreportagen.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Joe_Lovano_1015_C_Rainer_Ortag.
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Joe Lovano himself repeatedly switches back and forth between his tenor saxophone
and the tárogató, a Hungarian clarinet with a softer, woody tone.

Lovano embodies, but is in fact also someone who has witnessed and shaped more than
half a century of jazz history. His jazz is highly vibrant. With this formation,
Lovano has ventured into new territory.

Marcin Wasilewski’s trio embraced this music with enthusiasm and brilliance – and
all four were applauded by the enthusiastic Jazz Blues EU concert audience.

**Joe Lovano**, sax
 **Marcin Wasilewski**, piano **Sławomir Kurkiewicz**, double-
bass **Michał Miśkiewicz**, drums

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.jazzreportagen.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Joe_Lovano_0899_C_Rainer_Ortag.
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