Wisława is the first album by Tomasz Stanko's New York Quartet. It is a double set of new compositions, dedicated to the memory of the Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska, who died in 2012. The Polish trumpeter, a hero of European jazz since the 1960s, had spent several years living partly in New York. Here he leads three of the most responsive young players of that scene, in music that moves between dark free ballads and fast, open uptempo pieces.
The band took shape after Stanko had tried out many local musicians. "In New York I found three fantastic cats," he said of them. Cuban-born pianist David Virelles draws on ritual music as well as Thelonious Monk and Andrew Hill. Bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver form one of the most sensitive rhythm teams in current improvising. The album was recorded at Avatar Studios in New York in June 2012, with James Farber as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.
Stanko had worked with Szymborska late in her life. In 2009 she read new poems at the Kraków Opera and he answered them with trumpet improvisations. Several titles here, such as Tutaj - Here, Metafizyka and Mikrokosmos, take their cue from her writing. The title ballad opens the first disc and returns as a thirteen-minute variation to close the second. Between them come pieces like Assassins, a fast post-bop line with Stanko in his high register, and Dernier Cri, where a rubato ballad slips into double time. Many pieces leave the trio to improvise on its own before the trumpet brings back the theme.
In DownBeat John Corbett opened his review with "Some projects deserve two CDs", and found no loss of interest across the set. Ben Ratliff of The New York Times heard two records in one, a record of themes and a record of collective improvisation. In London Jazz News Chris Parker praised Stanko's "dark, wistful, intensely human sound", and other critics compared the quartet's interplay to the 1960s Miles Davis quintet.
This is the double CD on ECM Records, catalogue number ECM 2304/05, first released in February 2013, with a booklet text by Stanko dedicating the music to Szymborska.
