Customer Reviews

Faithful

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Marcin Wasilewski piano, Slawomir Kurkiewicz bass, and Michal Miskiewicz drums are the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, sometimes called the Simple Acoustic Trio in the earlier days. This trio also has played closley with Tomasz Stanko as the Tomasz Stanko Quartet. All their music is very good, some of it great. As a trio their three CDs are Trio, January, and Faithful. All three are excellent but my favorite CD by this group is the magnificent CD, January. The trio really clicked on January!

Faithful is a slower paced album than January. As such I found it slightly less engaging. The musicians are still the finest in the world but the material is just notch weaker than January. I'm a big fan of Michal Miskiewicz's drums. His technique is skillful and subtle. His cymbals never pierce but are rather understated. He has the finesse of a true master.

Marcin Wasilewski's flowing piano is smooth, sweet but precise. Wasilewski wrote some the original material on Faithful. He is quite an excellent composer. Again, I thought his material on January was just a bit better.

The recording of the material is at the usual extremely high quality that one has come to expect from ECM.

I highly recommend Faithful. But please, give January a listen.

I became acquainted with Marcin Wasilewski's trio through Tomasz Stanko's albums. The music they recorded is easily some of the finest stuff released by ECM (or at all!). Even though Stanko is a fantastic musician in his own right, I was incredibly excited when I saw that the trio was branching off to do their own thing. Their pre-ECM records are very good, but the recording quality wasn't quite the same as on ECM efforts, understandably. Their first ECM release, "Trio", took care of that and was a great record. "January" was even better, continuing the line of musical thought established in the trio's previous releases and polishing it. "Faithful" is their best record yet.

If you enjoyed the Marcin Wasilewski Trio's previous efforts, pick this one up without any second thoughts. If not, I recommend buying all of the ECM releases from the trio. The music is sophisticated yet accessible, with plenty of interesting melodies, happenin' improv, and tasty harmonies. I suppose you could knock these guys for "not evolving", but who cares when the music is good in the first place? No other piano trio comes close to these guys, and I for one can't wait for their next release.

"Faithful", the newest release from Wasilewski and friends, continue rather mellow and nostalgic house-sound of the Trio started with "January". Well recorded material that fits perfectly into those long, and cold winter nights spent next to the fireplace. The pace of the album points to the slower side with couple exception like "Big Foot" where for several moments we have dynamic bass and drum dialog introduced by Miskiewicz and Kurkiewicz duo. The material given on this album reminds me of Tord Gustavsen's approach where the melancholy and nostalgia are constantly present in the air.

I am looking forward to see them again live in NY or PA area soon!

Received this album upon first release (Apr 14). Having the two previous albums, both excellent (Summertime and Trio ), i was expecting a similar genre of cerebral and intensely musical jazz interactions among these 3 talented players. And, that's exactly what i got .... cerebral, smooth but sometimes intense interplay.The whole album held together beautifully. This group has a bright future.

I saw this trio at Blues Alley backing up Tomasz Stanko a few years ago, and I thought they were the better part of the quartet!

Wasilewski and Trio continue to make dark, meditative, minimalist music. This one is the most nearly peaceful and melodic of their series together and my favorite, for what that's worth. An impressionist wash covers these pieces. Masterfully recorded, will really show the sound of a high end system, despite the sparse personnel. Very clean three dimensionally recording, especially the percussion. This music is certainly Avant-garde without being dissonant and obnoxious.

Late night sounds, not party music for those who haven't heard it. Sounds a bit like early Brad Mehldau and late Bill Evans in places. Sip a glass of cognac by yourself and listen carefully. Seem to somehow describe some half forgotten events in the composer's life. I particularly like the title track and "Mosaic".

I find this music a balm in difficult times (like when listening to the acrimonious budget debates). I prefer this record to "January" .

Recommended

Hersch, Fred. Whirl. Palmetto Records. 2010

Fred Hersch, p; John Hébert, b; Eric Mcpherson, dr

There seems to have emerged a broad synthesis or approach in modern jazz piano playing, not the avant garde edge playing of, say, Fred Van Hove or Marilyn Crispell, but mainstream modern, that is deeply rewarding to the listener. Pianists as diverse as Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley, Kenny Baron or Kenny Werner or Brad Mehldau improvise in this context with great fluency and inventiveness, and equally important, with great musicality. The elements of the synthesis are these: a foundation in bop harmonies with the incorporation of more modern harmonic elements (a touch of impressionism here, of modalism there), a pianistic approach to their instrument, and interplay with drums and bass that is reminiscent of but doesn't try to duplicate the shifting balance of harmonic and rhythmic responsibilities in the classic Bill Evans trio with Scott La Faro and Paul Motian.

The difference is apparent upon comparison. Listen, for instance, to the two great last albums of John Lewis, Evolution and Evolution II (1999, 2001). Lewis was a master of subtly placed chords but his soloing, and much of his ensemble playing, is straight out bop style -single note and propulsive, though tempered in Lewis's case by his profound debt to Count Basie, as seen in the sparseness of Lewis's playing and his subtle placement of rhythmic accents across the pieces he plays.

Two recent albums show the creative strength of the new post-bop but still basically bop piano synthesis.

Fred Hersch is a talented and imaginative pianist who shines in almost every context. His recent album, Whirl, on which he is joined by talented drummer Eric McPherson and bassist John Hebert, shows his strengths to advantage. The program is intelligent and varied. There are two standards, "You're My Everything," done between mid tempo and up, with killer drumming, and "When Your Lover Has Gone," done slow and lush. There is a bolero written by Hersch, "Mandevilla." The trio plays it like a traditional bolero -but still recognizably jazz--all the way through. I especially recommend a boppish single note piece entitled "Mrs. Parker of KC." It was written by Hersch's teacher, the wonderfully talented and uncategorizable pianist-composer-teacher, Jaki Byard. This tune, and another entitled "Skipping," are rhythmically the most interesting in the album. The title song, "Whirl," Hersch dedicates to the great prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet, Suzanne Farrell. It is another of Hersch's trademark swirling melodies, with the drums boiling up and receding and then coming back in again like the waves in the ocean.

All in all, this is a highly satisfactory album which validates Hersch's high reputation in modern jazz circles.

Wasilewski, Marcin. Faithful. ECM. 2011

Marcin Wasilewski, p; Slawomir Kurkiewicz, b; Michal Miskiewicz, dr.

This is my second album by the Wasilewski trio (he's issued three) and it is fully as good as the first, which is to say, superb. The trio members, who have played together since the very early 2000s when they backed their fellow Pole, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, are almost empathic in the way they pick up on each other's music cues and play them back or counter them to accent the group sound. This is a very exciting group, as well as a musically sophisticated one.

There is not one bad cut in this fine album but some stand out: the propulsive "Night Train to You," the trio's take on the seldom played standard, "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men," the pensive "Oz Guiros" and "Woke Up in the Desert." I like especially their take on Paul Bley's boppish "Big Foot."

Wasilewski and Hersch don't sound at all alike but they sound like they've come through the same school in some respects. There is the expanded use of the keyboard, and a greater and more varied use and placement of chords -in Hersch's case, whole solo stretches done chordally rather than in single note streams. In each group, the musicians listen to each other more intensely. The bass has been left off the leash of four beats to a bar thumping out chord bases, and the drums do more than keep the time. There seems in both cases, especially in Hersch's case, a greater willingness to draw on music other than jazz.

Enough! Faithful is just an exceptional album. But it and see if you don't agree.

Pianist Marcin Wasiklewski and coconspirators bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz show that the accolades flowing their way are deserved as they think and play fresh and nuanced jazz. The music flows as smoothly as water courses through well-worn stone channels, yet has enough mystery and magic to keep the listener anticipating and engaged.

I cannot speak with any eloquence or knowledge about their technique or whether they are following with or breaking from any sort of tradition here. So I take the title "Faithful" to related to one's own inner compass and directions ("to thine own self be true"), and this trio does not waiver in seeking to forge its own identity among the multiple excellent piano-bass-drums trios out there not by pushing the boundaries of their instruments but rather by honing and coaxing them.

As with most music, I find certain settings embellish the experience (or is it the other way around?), and "Faithful" works well as the soundtrack for an early summer evening spent reflecting and watching fireflies and I suspect will also serve the same purpose for the first fires of autumn.

This CD wasn't available on the stated release date yet the mp3 download was so I cancelled my order for the disk and downloaded the mp3 version. I just had to have it. I was not disappointed. Marcin consistently creates extraordinary music. I'm sure the following reviews will have technical comments that explain precisely what he is doing... what I know is that there are only a few artists that express in a absolutely natural way. The great Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is one and Marcin Wasilewski is another.

This is peaceful and current light jazz. Great music to sit by the fire with a loved one and sip wine by.

Mellow to the point of meekness; I have forced myself to listen to it over and over again for the past week and still don't get it. the track I like the most is "Ballad of the Sad Young Man", lyrical, but still it sounds too similar to any of Keith Jerrett's. Another track "Night Train to You" resembles Brad Mehldau's "Highway Ryder". Their works with Tomasz Stanko was brilliant. Their previous album January was a desert island item to me. I have high expectations on Faithful and now is as well disappointed.