Wednesday, October 1, 2008


About Music - Tomasz Stanko Quartet

Tomasz Stanko (born 11 July 1942 in Rzeszów) is a renowned Polish jazz trumpet player, composer, and pioneer of the jazz avant-garde.In the 1960s he was the leader of the quartet Jazz Darings, and later played in Trzaskowski’s and Krzysztof Komeda’s bands. Today he is at the forefront of international contemporary jazz trumpetism, and holds a status in international jazz circles similar to where Miles Davis was in the seventies.

He is one of ECM's leading jazz recording artists, drawing large concert audiences in Europe and the USA. For two years in a row (2004 and 2005) Tomasz Stanko has won the Australian Bell Jazz Award for the best international album of the year. Stanko's latest recording Lontano (ECM 2006) features three of Poland's finest young jazz musicians, Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michael Miskiewicz, with whom he regularly performs and tours around the world.

Tomasz Stanko has been ranking high in the 2005 and 2007 Downbeat Annual International critics polls’ Rising Star Acoustic Group..In the four years since the quartet's much-loved ECM debut album Soul of Things (2003), both the trumpeter and his young band have continued to make their mark. Many miles of touring, on both sides of the Atlantic, have honed their already exceptional group understanding.

Their 2nd album (Suspended Night released May 2004) builds upon the conceptual framework established by its predecessor. In September’06 Lontano was released complementing the recording triology of the present Stanko Quartet. In the wake of Soul of Things, Stanko won the first European Jazz Prize, a major new award initiated by the Austrian Government and the City of Vienna. Now, in his 60s, he still remains a fascinating, mysterious, pioneer of a unique kind of east European jazz independence. Find out more at his website: www.tomaszstanko.com

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