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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
