One of the most original and creative jazz trumpet players in the world, as proclaimed by the New Yorker, will also give the annual Copernicus lecture to highlight the rich variety of Poland's intellectual and cultural life. Entry to the lecture is free and open to the public.
To join Stańko during his UMS debut are the other members of his New Balladyna quartet: saxophonist Tim Berne, bass player John Hébert and Jim Black on drums. The program will be announced by the artists from the stage on the night of the event.
Inspired by early Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, Tomasz Stańko debuted at the end of the 1950s in Kraków. In the 1990s, his quartet was hailed as the best jazz group of the decade by the Penguin Jazz Guide. Subsequent releases have brought him into the orbit of the American market, where he has been touring regularly ever since. In 2002, he was the first winner of the European Jazz Prize awarded in Vienna. For the last eight years Tomasz Stańko has been regularly ranked among the world’s top ten jazz trumpeters in the prestigious Down Beat Magazine Poll.
His most recent activities include the Wisława project, inspired by the Polish poet, essayist, and Nobel Laureate Wisława Symborska, who died in 2012. At the invitation of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Stańko also wrote Polin Suite, which was performed at the opening ceremony of the museum’s core exhibition in October 2014.
Annual Copernicus Lecture by Tomasz Stańko
Thursday, February 4, 2015, 5:30 pm
Stern Auditorium, U-M Museum of Art
525 S. State St.
Concert of Tomasz Stańko and the New Balladyna quartet
Thursday, February 5, 2015, 7:30 pm
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
911 N. University Ave.
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Source: UMS