Soul of Things

Tomasz Stanko | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 26, 2002)
• Original Release Date: 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ecm Records
• ASIN: B00005YPG8
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,278 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #17 in Music > World Music > Europe > Eastern Europe > Poland

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prepare yourself for some drop-dead gorgeous jazz, June 4, 2002

By 

Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul of Things (Audio CD)

Thomasz Stanko, veteran Polish jazz trumpter, has made a truly remarkable album with Soul of things. Spiritually, it resonates with that equally stunning work by Peter Epstein, The Invisible, though the two sound little alike. It's what's at the heart of each disc, an attempt to evoke things beyond our senses, that makes them akin.

Whereas Epstein goes the mystery route (and very effectively, I might add), Stanko goes for the elagiac. Ravishingly beautiful open trumpet sound is the order of the day here. As I mention elsewhere, when the ECM thing works, it often works wonders, as it does here. I can't recall a more sheerly beautiful jazz recording.

If you're not on to Stanko, this a great place to start. If you're already hip to him, you'll certainly want to add this to your collection.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful work from Stanko, June 13, 2002

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul of Things (Audio CD)

Tomasz Stanko is sometimes called the "Polish Miles Davis" & this album demonstrates that he's got a deeper understanding of Davis--especially the mid-1960s group with Hancock & Shorter--than any number of American neoconservative xeroxers of the style. There's not a note on this disc which doesn't owe a debt to Miles Davis, & there's not a note on it which sound anything less than identifiably Stanko's. One thing he shares with Davis is the ability to reinvent a tune for the occasion in subtle or broad ways. The tracks here are untitled, but they are often recognizable from earlier Stanko discs; for instance, "Die Weisheit von Isidore Ducasse" from _Bosonossa_ was slightly rededicated to the "Comte de Lautreamont" on _Leosia_ (the dedicatees are the some person, the 19th-c. author of the bizarre & sickeningly perverse novel _Les Chants de Maldoror_), & is here revisited as part VI. "Maldoror's War Song" from _Bosonossa_ is part X--a particularly striking change, from a passionate free-jazz reading to this disc's graceful swinger. -- Part I on this disc is revisited as Part IX, in a longer but less intense version; the opener is one of the most memorable things I've heard in a while, a gently drifting melody carried over slowly shifting pedal points, with all four players just barely keeping time & frequently dropping into silence.

This is Stanko's working band, three young musicians I've not encountered before. They have a profound empathy with him. This disc is mostly subtle & quiet (there are two or three hard-swinging tracks through), but it's always swinging, unlike Stanko's more freeish albums. It's unlikely this year will turn up a better new jazz release--it's an outstanding disc.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jazz, 'Round 3:00 AM , not Midnight, April 29, 2002

By 

rash67 (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Soul of Things (Audio CD)

The Thelonious Monk's Jazz standard "'Round Midnight" has been covered by nearly every artist in Jazz and rightly so, it's a classically great song. If you can imagine a quartet with trumpet and piano, let's say Chet Baker & Bill Evans in the club not 'Round Midnight, but 'Round 3:00 AM, after everyone has left, playing a set of pretty laid back stuff, you have "Soul Of Things".

The CD is very well recorded, reminds me of the clarity and austerity of Fellow ECM artist Bobo Stenson. The songs, with unhelpful titles like "III", "X" etc, meander pleasantly like a late night jam session. Thoughtful music. Sometimes builds up to swing, more often slows to a quiet hypnotic pace. Emphasizes the inner voices of the instruments and the inner thoughts of the artists. Coolness that borders on freeze, in indigos, grays and blacks. Abstract. Melancholy. These Europeans show little anger or dissonance.

Listen late at night with a glass of wine. Recommended. It will grow on you with repeated listening. You'll find yourself coming back again and again.

I like it. do you?