Wisława / Wislawa

Wislawa is 70-year-old Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s debut on ECM, but his expansive music-making sounds right at home on the German label known for its pristine productions. Stanko’s band members here—pianist David Virelles, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Gerald Cleaver—are clearly attuned to Stanko’s compositions and lyrical sensibility. The album, a tribute to the late Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, opens with the moving title track. (In 2009, Szymborska and Stanko collaborated on a reading/performance at the Krakow Opera.) Stanko’s slow solo displays his burnished tone to great effect, and the band creates a lovely, detailed web behind him. “Assassins” is something else: edgy post-bop bristling with energy. Stanko sounds fired up here, evoking Miles Davis, a key influence. And Virelles, Morgan, and Cleaver recall Davis’s mid- to late-'60s acoustic bands. Stanko is subtly dazzling on “Oni,” a cut whose placid surface ripples with tension. The uptempo “Faces” burns throughout, with Virelles' stabbing, dissonant block chords giving the music a special charge. The album closes with its longest cut, a variation on the opener.