Tomasz Stanko – December Avenue album review: Charged with New York’s energy and charisma

It was Miles Davis who said “sometimes you have to play a long time to sound like yourself”.

By that standard, veteran Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has earned his status as one of Europe's most distinctive jazz voices who, on a lifelong journey from avant-gardist to soft-spoken lyricist, has held true to his own melancholy musical vision. Sure, there are traces of Miles, Chet Baker and Kenny Wheeler, but Stanko's vulnerable, desolate sound is all his own.

This is the second release from the trumpeter's powerful New York quartet, with Cuban pianist David Virelles, drummer Gerald Cleaver and new addition Reuben Rogers on bass (replacing Thomas Morgan), a group delicately poised between a European and American sensibility, ruminative and folk-tinged, but charged with the energy and charisma of Stanko's adopted city.

[ propermusic.com ]