Marcin Wasilewski

Poland's Marcin Wasilewski began playing piano at the age of seven, and studied classical music in high school, but the course of his professional career as a musician was set at the age of 13 when he discovered and immersed himself in jazz, forming the Simple Acoustic Trio with friends Slawomir Kurkicwicz (bass) and Michal Miskiewicz (drums) a year or so later. The trio released several Poland-only albums under that group name, including 2000's Habanera and 2001's Lullaby for Rosemary (both on Not Two Records), before famed Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko spotted them and they soon became his rhythm section of choice, recording 2002's The Soul of Things and 2004's Suspended Night with Stanko. Wasilewski, Kurkicwicz, and Miskiewicz stepped out on their own again for 2005's Trio, released by Manfred Eicher's ECM Records. A second ECM album, January, appeared in 2008. Faithful appeared in 2011, with another ECM album, Spark of Life, arriving in 2014.