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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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
