Wislawa

The odds were good that I was going to like this double album even before the first note sounded. It’s named in honor of my favorite poet, Wislawa Szymborksa, the Polish writer who died last year. Any musician who shares my love of Szymborska is bound to be running his or her soul train on tracks very much like mine, and Stanko most assuredly is. The 70-year-old Stanko was born in Poland, but his bassist, Thomas Morgan, is less than half his age, and was born in Hayward. The exquisitely sensitive pianist David Virelles was born in Cuba in 1983 (Virelles also contributed to the lovely The Sirens album by Chris Potter). Gerald Cleaver, the drummer, was born in Detroit in the early ’60s. Despite the differences in age and places of birth, these four guys are utterly in tune with one another, as tightly knit as ensemble players ever get. Of the connection between the poet and the songs, Stanko writes in the liner notes: “The pieces ‘Faces’ and ‘A Shaggy Vandal’ take their cue from Szymborska’s poem, ‘Thoughts That Visit Me on Busy Streets,’ a wry meditation on old and new forms.” This is jazz of a very high caliber, and if it serves to encourage the listener to go out and read Szymborska, so much the better.