Homage

Joe Lovano, Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz, Michal Miskiewicz

HomageHomage
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Release date: 25.04.2025 ECM 2845
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Joe Lovano and his Polish conspirators from the Marcin Wasilewski trio are endowed with an especially adventurous spirit on their second joint endeavour for ECM. Building on the lyrical strengths that inhabited the group’s previous recording (Arctic Riff, 2020), on Homage the quartet moreover investigates the type of free-flowing interplay and expansive passages of improvisation that have become a staple in Lovano’s ventures with his trio tapestry. Clocking in at over ten minutes each, two long-form compositions and the title track “Homage” – all Lovano originals – make up the bedrock of the album and find the players at their most exploratory, with Joe frequently swapping out his tenor and tárogató for a variety of percussion instruments. The group’s pass at “Love In The Garden”, a composition by the Polish violin virtuoso Zbigniew Seifert, embellishes the evocative melody with fluid harmonies, wrapped in haunting rubato tides. Improvised miniatures complete a programme that proves Wasilewski and his trio cohorts to be the ideal match for Lovano’s singular musings and the group’s seamless chemistry is more apparent than ever on Homage. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.   
Joe Lovano und seine polnischen Mitstreiter vom Marcin Wasilewski Trio zeigen sich auf ihrem zweiten gemeinsamen Album für ECM von einer besonders abenteuerlustigen Seite. Aufbauend auf den lyrischen Stärken der vorherigen Aufnahme der Gruppe (Arctic Riff, 2020), erforscht das Quartett auf Homage nun auch noch die Art von frei fließendem Zusammenspiel und ausgedehnten Improvisationspassagen, die schon zu einem festen Bestandteil von Lovanos Unternehmungen mit seinem Trio Tapestry geworden sind. Zwei lange Kompositionen und der Titeltrack „Homage“ - allesamt Originale von Lovano - bilden mit einer Länge von jeweils über zehn Minuten das Fundament des Albums und zeigen die Musiker in ihrer experimentierfreudigsten Form, wobei Joe häufig sein Tenorsaxophon und sein Tárogató gegen diverse Perkussionsinstrumente tauscht. Bei „Love In The Garden“, einer Komposition des polnischen Geigenvirtuosen Zbigniew Seifert, schmückt die Gruppe die stimmungsvolle Melodie mit fließenden Harmonien aus, die in eindringliche Rubato-Gefilde gehüllt sind. Improvisierte Miniaturen vervollständigen ein Programm, das zeigt, dass Wasilewski und seine Trio-Kollegen die ideale Ergänzung zu Lovanos einzigartigen Improvisationslinien sind. Die schlackenlose Chemie der Gruppe wird auf Homage deutlicher denn je. Das Album wurde von Manfred Eicher produziert.   
Featured Artists Recorded

November 2023, Van Gelder Studio, New Jersey

Original Release Date

25.04.2025

  • 1Love In The Garden
    (Zbigniew Seifert)    04:13
  • 2Golden Horn
    (Joe Lovano)    10:20
  • 3Homage
    (Joe Lovano)    08:00
  • 4Giving Thanks
    (Joe Lovano)    02:25
  • 5This Side - Catville
    (Joe Lovano)    12:00
  • 6Projection
    (Joe Lovano)    02:03
Joe Lovano, that giant American elder of jazz reeds-playing, nowadays seems – rather like the equally eminent saxophone master Charles Lloyd – to be simmering all his decades of timeless tunes and exquisite passing phrases down to essences. The 72-year-old Ohio-born sax star and occasional drummer’s partners here are Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s collectively freethinking trio – ‘Homage’’s shape was formed on extensive tours with them, and a week in 2023 at New York’s Village Vanguard club that acted as an impromptu rehearsal. […] Wasilewski’s compatriot Zbigniew Seifert’s ‘Love in the Garden’ is reworked as a rapturous tenor-sax ballad with every soft horn outbreath embraced in silvery keyboard streams. Lovano’s ‘Golden Horn’ evokes the iconic four-note hook of John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ before his tenor sax eases in on hints and fragments, then sweeps into fast linear post-bop. There’s a driving, McCoy Tyneresque solo from Wasilewski and Lovano switches to hand drums, animatedly joining percussionist Michal Miskiewicz – but there’s an exhilarating surprise when the leader whoops back in on the soprano-sax-like Hungarian tárogató. The title track’s opening short-burst figures turn to unaccompanied and free-collective jamming before an enchanting percussion coda; ‘Giving Thanks’ is a kaleidoscope of figures on unaccompanied tenor sax; and ‘This Side – Catville’, an album highlight, deftly balances a snappy short-phrase melody and rolling free-groove.
John Fordham, The Guardian
 
Transferring the material from a live setting into the confines of the recording studio, the quartet lost none of their potency or spontaneity and able to recapture the spirit of adventure found in a club performance. If bound by time constraints the four musicians have judged these cuts perfectly, and even when stretching the pieces over the ten mark there is no sense of longueur, no superfluous notes or gestures, just the feeling that the music takes as long as it takes.
Nick Lea, Jazz Views
 
In a long and illustrious career Joe Lovano has made many remarkable albums. It’s a pleasure to be able to say that we can now add his latest release ‘Homage’ to that formidable list. Together with Marcin Wasilewski Trio, one of ECM’s longest-standing piano-led trios, saxophonist/composer Lovano thrills and delights with a stunning performance that truly rolls back the years. There’s an interconnected spiritual energy throughout this recording, one which brings the best out of the ever-youthful Lovano, supported in no small way by this exceptional trio. […] ‘Homage’ will undoubtedly stand the test of time as a great recording, proving Wasilewski and his trio to be the ideal match for Lovano’s magical musings, the group’s flawless chemistry more apparent than ever before.
Mike Gates, UK Vibe (Five stars)
 
It is an inviting listen: the poise and gentleness of the opening track ‘Love in the Garden’ are wonderful. ‘Golden Horn’ is an object lesson in the creation of natural conversational flow out of a short motif, and guiding the listener through a whole range of moods. ‘Homage’ is freer, spikier and fun […] Lovano’s solo saxophone musings on ‘Giving Thanks’ are superbly thoughtful, and the sound has been wonderfully caught. I thought they could easily have gone on for longer. Joe Lovano has found the ideal context to play with a remarkable spontaneity and freedom. His ethereally light tread here has come an almost unbelievably long way from the heavy-hitting extraversion of an album like ‘Solid Steps’. But this is a very good place to be. Recommended.
Sebastian Scotney, The Arts Desk
 
‘Homage’ marks the sophomore recording collaboration between leading American saxophonist Joe Lovano and the exceptionally notable Polish trio led by pianist Marcin Wasilewski—featuring the ultra-melodic Slawomir Kurkiewicz on bass and Michal Miskiewicz on drums. The four have cultivated a formidable sound and easygoing simpatico, layering harmonies and effortless rhythmic pulses that shape their deeply personal storytelling.
Filipe Freitas, Jazz Trail
The music throughout the week was unfolding every night in a very special way. So when we went into the studio, we were able to capture an exceptional, concentrated five-hour moment.
– Joe Lovano
 
Joe Lovano and his Polish conspirators from the Marcin Wasilewski trio are in an especially adventurous spirit on their second joint endeavour for ECM. Building on the lyrical strengths that inhabited the group’s previous recording (Arctic Riff, 2020), on Homage the quartet moreover investigates the type of free-flowing interplay and expansive passages of improvisation that have become a staple in Lovano’s ventures with his trio tapestry group and elsewhere. The album was recorded at a studio session in the midst of the group’s Village Vanguard residency in late Autumn 2023, revealing fluent structures as they’re being developed. A rare sense of expressivity and spiritual affinity grace the session.
 
Clocking in at over ten minutes each, two long-form compositions and the title track “Homage” – all Lovano originals – make up the bedrock of the album and find the players at their most exploratory, with Joe frequently swapping out his tenor and tárogató for a variety of percussion instruments - “Just a handful of gongs and some light percussion sounds,” notes Lovano. “It’s so nice to communicate with Michael on drums – in the studio it felt like we were one!”
 
Reigniting the spark in the studio was no difficult task for the quartet, as they’d toured extensively since their first album. “We connected with Joe right from the start,” the trio recalls. “It was natural. He’s the kind of musician who jumps into the moment and plays along with whatever he hears, which matches how we approach music. Touring together over the years only made this connection stronger, both on and off stage. His openness and spontaneity allowed real musical dialogue to happen.”
 
Joe originally wrote “Homage”, the title track, for the 2023 ECM celebration at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, celebrating Manfred Eicher’s 80th birthday alongside A-listers Dave Holland, Anouar Brahem, Ralph Towner, Norma Winstone and many more. There, Lovano performed the composition in quartet with Avishai Cohen, Tigran Hamasyan and Nasheet Waits. “The piece is dedicated to Manfred and the label’s history. I grew up listening to ECM recordings, because those were the cats that I wanted to play with, and it turned out to be the music that gave me a lot of direction.” In putting the score together, Lovano “used no notes – just feelings written in a sequence of events”. Not strictly tonal, Lovano and Marcin’s trio shift between different keys throughout the song, alternating pulse and rhythm in the process and revealing Lovano’s deep connection with the music of conductor and composer Gunther Schuller, and by extension of Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell.
 
“Golden Horn”, one of the two lengthier pieces, is a modal meditation that finds the tides shifting smoothly between the players. Miskiewicz’s pulse is elegantly uncompromising, as he and Kurkiewicz on bass keep a steady backdrop against Wasilewski and Lovano’s dauntless explorations through the bars. The interaction is reminiscent of what the trio used to sound like accompanying the great late Tomasz Stanko on the trumpeters ECM recordings in the early 2000s (the archival live recording from 2004, September Night was just released in 2024).
 
Even more spontaneity and freedom grace the twelve-minute cut “This Side – Catville”, as the quartet embarks on a freewheeling blowout through swinging bars and again modal harmonic shifts – exemplary of each players heightened intuition for responsive interplay. Wasilewski’s keyboard flights move like ripples in the water, his soft-spoken action shaping an effective contrast against Lovano’s sharply overblown and melodically intricate jabs. “We really love to follow Joe’s spontaneous free approach in playing,” says Marcin, also speaking for his bandmates. “But it’s always rooted in the tradition at the same time. Combining these two elements in our own sense of music became more expressive recently.”
 
The group’s pass at “Love In The Garden”, a composition by the Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert, embellishes the evocative ballad with fluid harmonies, wrapped in a rubato pulse. Marcin: “It was a spontaneous choice – no discussion about how or what to play. We just went for it, and the music unfolded naturally.” It’s a surprising and tasteful take on the rather electric original from the 70s, but, as Joe notes, “the thing is to not play something the way it looks but to try and create it as you play, you know. And playing ballads, that’s the heart and soul, really, of the music.”
 
Improvised miniatures complete a programme that proves Wasilewski and his trio cohorts to be the ideal match for Lovano’s singular musings and the group’s flawless chemistry is more apparent than ever on Homage. Recorded at the Van Gelder studio in New Jersey and mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich, the album was produced by Manfred Eicher.   
YEAR DATE VENUE LOCATION
2025 July 03 Jazz Open- Spardawelt Eventcenter Stuttgart, Germany
2025 July 05 tba Getxo, Spain
2025 July 06 tba Vilafrance del Penedes, Spain
2025 July 07 tba Montpellier, France
2025 July 09 Jazz In The Garden Krakow, Poland
2025 July 10 Royal Baths Warsaw, Poland
2025 July 13 tba Pescara, Italy
2025 July 15 tba Carpi, Italy
2025 July 16 tba Rome, Italy
2025 July 17 tba Ancona, Italy
2025 July 18 tba Atina, Italy
2025 July 27 tba Dinant, Belgium

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