Tomasz Stańko: An Album Guide for Beginners

full_stanko_tomasz_forum_770.jpg, default, Tomasz Stańko, Stockholm, Sweden, 1991, photo: Woody Ochnio / Forum, Tomasz Stańko: An Album Guide for Beginners

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From the beginnings of modern jazz in Poland to illegal recordings at the Taj Mahal. Here is a selection of albums by one of Poland’s most interesting jazz musicians – find out where to start listening to none-other-than Tomasz Stańko!

The Andrzej Trzaskowski Quintet ‎– Polish Jazz Vol. 4 (1965)

We can hear Tomasz Stańko on two albums that defined the sound and style of Polish jazz. When he was just 23 years old, he performed alongside both of the founding fathers of modern Polish jazz – Andrzej Trzaskowski and Krzysztof Komeda. How did he manage this? Stańko quickly became renowned for his original style of playing during jam sessions at the Helikon jazz club in Kraków, as well as performances with Michał Urbaniak and other young musicians. Additionally, his band at the time, the Jazz Darings, won the Amateur Jazz Band Competition of Southern Poland; Stańko was hailed ‘best instrumentalist’. He travelled all over Poland and abroad with Trzaskowski and Komeda. This opened the door for Stańko and enabled him to develop his career.

‘Trzaskowski was very intellectual. Komeda was the most creative’, Stańko said, summing up these two jazz pioneers. Trzaskowski’s importance as the first intellectual of Polish jazz was emphasised by the outstanding composer Bogusław Schaeffer, who claimed that thanks to Trzaskowski – his student – he first encountered jazz and began to understand it. Many of the musicians who worked with Trzaskowski would certainly agree with this statement.

While other musicians became more famous than Trzaskowski, he surpassed them all with his intelligence and keen ear. Many years ago, when I was teaching harmony at the musicology department and eagerly emphasising the innovativeness of the whole tone scale introduced by Debussy, my most musical student, Andrzej Trzaskowski, a jazz musician, as it later turned out, strongly objected. […] Dear Andrzej was right, for he was guided by a different musical ear, an ear that responded to the functional harmony typical of jazz.

^{Bogusław Schaeffer, unpublished text available on the website of the Aurea Porta Foundation}

Andrzej Trzaskowski Quintet, the fourth album in the legendary Polish Jazz series, was recorded in January 1965. It has pieces that arose not only from a fascination with jazz but also contemporary music. Alongside swing, there are dodecaphonic fragments. Melodies are interrupted suddenly, without any warning, and meander in abstract directions. ‘Trzaskowski’s compositions were good, with poetic structures. Very nice,’ said Stańko.

Komeda Quintet ‎– Astigmatic (1967)

Astigmatic was recorded in the Warsaw Philharmonic concert hall during the Jazz Jamboree in 1965, all night long, after the concerts were over. ‘I remember the serenity emanating from that session’, Stańko recalls. Alongside the musicians with whom Komeda regularly collaborated (Zbigniew Namysłowski and Tomasz Stańko), there was also a spontaneously assembled rhythm section from Albert Mangelsdorff’s band – Gunter Lenz on bass and Rune Carlson on drums. The composer of the soundtrack for the film Knife in the Water wanted to gather the best possible musicians for his recording session.

Stańko doesn’t play the trumpet here. He plays the flügelhorn (a small brass instrument). Why? Playing this instrument isn’t as physically taxing, and Komeda required his musicians to be in excellent condition. ‘I was able to achieve a more aggressive sound, softened by the specific tone of the instrument itself. I achieved a timbre that worked fantastically well in Komeda’s music,’ said Stańko, while emphasising that he isn’t fond of the instrument.

While discussing his experiences performing with Komeda, he recalled that Komeda didn’t give them any instructions. He only smiled at them mysteriously.

He gave us total freedom and told us: “Play however you want; it’s up to you.” That was his strength. We repeated some things that had been insufficiently rehearsed.

^{Magdalena Grzebałkowska, Komeda. Osobiste Życie Jazzu [Komeda: A Personal Life of Jazz], Kraków 2018}

Later, Stańko’s younger collaborators spoke of him in very similar terms. In an interview with Culture.pl, Marcin Wasilewski said, ‘Tomasz didn’t give us many specific instructions. The things he said to us sounded rather unconventional.’

Tomasz Stańko Quintet ‎– ‘Music For K’ (1970)

‘Your first band is like your first woman, your first lover. You remember it the most vividly,’ Stańko once said about his quintet. His first serious band was comprised of Zbigniew Seifert (alto saxophone), Janusz Muniak (tenor saxophone), Bronisław Suchanek (double bass) and Janusz Stefański (percussion).

This is Komeda’s legacy told in a language inspired by the aesthetics of free jazz – melodies interrupted by powerful bursts of sound. Each piece has a clear beginning, climax and end. The only thing missing from Stańko’s quintet is piano – Komeda’s instrument. After all, this is an album that mourns his absence.

The pieces on this album recorded for the Polish Jazz series are based on Msza Jazzowa (Jazz Mass), fragments of which were performed at Krzysztof Komeda’s funeral. It was commissioned by Dominican monks in Kraków who wished to attract young people who were spending their nights in smoky jazz clubs. During the premiere of Msza Jazzowa, Stańko’s band also performed the piece Psychodelia – it was true ecumenism. This was the era when the Polish hippie movement was blossoming.

An album recorded later by the quintet, Purple Sun (1973), was completely different. Zbigniew Seifert switched from the saxophone to the violin. The sound was looser, funkier and more rhythmic. The music had a more open form than before.

Records can never capture the experience of jazz created during live improvisations at concerts. Reading about Stańko’s band’s wild concerts, we can only imagine the charismatic aura hovering over the musicians who understood each other without words. To understand the attitude of Stańko’s band to sounds, it’s worth mentioning something that occurred during jazz workshops in Chodzież in 1972. An attendee of the workshops who was an employee at the Railway Sleeper Factory in Mirosław Ujski suggested that the musicians play a concert in the factory during the change of two work shifts.

‘Improvising on the basis of a classic head arrangement, Stańko and Company simultaneously followed the workers’ reactions; they treated all the noises, even the howling of the siren announcing the change of crews, as part of their performance,’ Józef Balcerek recalls in Jazz.

He adds that the work statistics of the crews present during the concert showed a significant increase in productivity. He stresses that this is not a joke, but rather good subject material for ‘a research paper on jazz therapy’. Does free jazz inspire better work performance? Too bad the concert wasn’t recorded – perhaps it could have been a Copernican Revolution for improvised music.

Dżamble ‎– Wołanie O Słońce Nad Światem (Calling for the Sun to Appear Above the World) (1971)

Tomasz Stańko has made his mark not only on jazz and improvised music. His trumpet-playing is also featured on many pop and rock albums. One of the most interesting examples is an album by Dżamble, a band associated with Piwnica pod Baranami and Helikon – the group in which Andrzej Zaucha first revealed his talent to the world.One can also hear other great jazz musicians on this album – Michał Urbaniak, Janusz Muniak and Zbigniew Seifert – all of whom knew each other very well from jams and concerts. This made it possible to create very interesting arrangements that were rich in captivating harmonic motifs and changes in dynamics and rhythm. It’s very complex music. These jazz instrumentalists easily fit into rock music and enriched it with their artistry. It was wild and rebellious; it craved fun and freedom, crossing genre boundaries. This is best heard in the prelude to the 10-minute title track, in which a blues rhythm is preceded by chaotic bursts of notes played by brass instruments – probably the liveliest part of the album.

Tomasz Stańko’s trumpet can also be heard in songs by Maryla Rodowicz (Wyznanie, 1972), Maanam (O!, 1982) and Obywatel G.C. (Tak tak… To Ja, 1988). Sometimes it’s a very symbolic but invaluable contribution. This is the case with the track Die Grenze, which ends with a harsh tone from Stańko’s trumpet, flowing smoothly into the track Zwierzę (Animal) – a mournful bugle call that sounds a bit like a lament and a bit like a playful imitation of various unspecified animals. On the vinyl record, these pieces are connected as one track.

Tomasz Stańko – ‘Balladyna’ (1976)

This was Stańko’s debut with ECM, a Munich-based record label run by Manfred Eicher that has released European and American jazz for many years – both mainstream and avant-garde. On this album, Stańko combined the spirit of free jazz with melodiousness; composition prevails here over improvisation. The recording features Tomasz Szukalski on soprano and tenor saxophone, Dave Holland on double bass and Edward Vesala on percussion.

In the interview with Rafał Księżyk, Stańko stressed that it was a language based on melodic atonality, a counterpoint that made the music more abstract. The first line allowed him to convey beauty and a certain simplicity, while the second line allowed him to modulate away from the key and take aesthetic twists and turns.

Tomasz Stańko ‎– ‘Music from Taj Mahal And Karla Caves’ (1980)

The Finnish percussionist Edward Vesala was one of Tomasz Stańko’s close friends. In 1980, they travelled together to India. While visiting the Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, Stańko noticed that it had beautiful and unusual acoustics. He dreamed of playing there. Of course, this was impossible – it’s a sacred place, not a concert hall. Edward Vesala was determined to record his friend – he bribed the Muslim security guards, who allowed them to record an hour’s worth of material.

Stańko first visited the temple for several days in order to understand the acoustic processes in that space.

The acoustics were otherworldly. Especially when crowds of people were passing by. There was a terrible din of human voices amplified by an echo. It was a long echo – it lasted fifteen or sixteen seconds. I noticed that when I started to whistle softly in the midst of that din, quietly, I couldn’t hear anything at first, but after a while I started to hear my own sound and it was so selective that I could hear it perfectly, every nuance. In the midst of that overwhelming din. Unbelievable selectivity.

The recording was made with three microphones and two kinds of reverb. Stańko played solo. This was one of his most avant-garde works – a patient exploration of his own breath, his instrument and the unusual recording space. It was music associated with mysticism, but at the same time very down-to-earth. In essence, it was an acoustic experiment.

On the album’s B side, there’s a composition recorded in an equally interesting location – the ancient Buddhist Karla Caves.

Tomasz Stańko ‎– ‘C.O.C.X.’ (1985)

A relaxed groove, a Jamaican breeze, Latin rhythms – samba and bossa nova. A lazy atmosphere and some subdued trumpet sounds. Sun, people drying off after getting out of a pool, a lot of drinks under palm trees. This is the lightest album Stańko ever recorded, and the artist himself called it ‘free pop’. He said he wanted to record music you could listen to in bed (instead of Bob Marley).

It sounds like a radio hit, but the circulation of this music was more underground. The musicians (Apostolis Antymos, Witold Szczurek and José Antonio Torres) rehearsed in Remont, alongside Izrael and other reggae-inspired new wave bands. They even played at the Róbrege Festival.

C.O.C.X. can be placed next to Spacer nad Brzegiem Morza (A Walk by the Seaside, 1969), which was recorded by Tadeusz Prejzner’s Instrumental Ensemble, of which Stańko was a member. This is one of the most interesting examples of easy listening music in Poland – relaxing orchestral parts meet a jazz section. The music creates an atmosphere that strives to reflect the gentle murmur of waves and rippling sand.

Tomasz Stańko Quartet – ‘Suspended Night’ (2004)

In 1993, Tomasz Stańko invited musicians who had just finished high school to collaborate with him. For Marcin Wasilewski, Sławomir Kurkiewicz and Michał Miśkiewicz, it was a situation they could never have imagined in their wildest dreams – they were invited to play with a member of Komeda’s legendary band, one of the world’s greatest trumpet-players. By doing this, Stańko was repeating Komeda’s grand gesture of inviting him to collaborate long ago, when he had been a young, unknown musician.

Suspended Night is a spare and very conventional album. It’s based on pure sound and catchy melodies that are exhilarating but simultaneously soothing enough to lull you to sleep. The rhythm section is definitely in the foreground here. Stańko often drifts off somewhere, quietly sinking into the current of the sounds. He allows himself to relax while playing music with his ‘children’, as he called Wasilewski’s trio.

Tomasz Stańko New York Quartet ‎– December Avenue (2017)

The last band Stańko recorded with was his New York Quartet: Reuben Rogers on double bass, Gerald Cleaver on percussion, and David Virelles on piano. To this line-up one should also add the producer Manfred Eicher – without him, Stańko’s music would probably sound a bit different.

Alongside melancholy ballads we can hear pieces that go beyond tonality – they’re noisy and full of tone clusters. But the dominating mood is one of attentiveness and careful listening – a constant taking of breath, which forces a certain slowness. On this record, one can hear what’s extremely valuable in Stańko’s music: his ability to create a solid band in which there is communication between the instruments.

Unless otherwise noted, Tomasz Stańko’s statements are taken from Rafał Księżyk’s book-length interview with him, published as Desperado. Autobiografia (Desperado: An Autobiography) (Kraków, 2010).

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