Tomasz Dąbrowski - The Individual Beings (April)

The late Tomasz Stanko may not be a household name, but the Polish trumpeter’s impact on the European jazz scene was huge, his brooding tone and atmospheric sound much loved and very influential. One of Stanko’s protégés, trumpeter and composer Tomasz Dąbrowski pays tribute to his mentor on The Individual Beings in a very direct way: he uses the instrument Stanko played on many of his classic nineties recordings. Like Stanko, Dąbrowski has one foot in moody balladry and one in the avant-garde, as evidenced by the stirring “Old Habits,” which starts as one and moves to the other. But Dąbrowski isn’t merely aping his teacher here. If Stanko and his generation stood for anything, it was individual expression (hence the LP title), and his student uses the master’s aesthetic as a springboard into his own vision. Hence Dąbrowski’s penchant for going further out than Stanko on songs like “Troll” and “Sandy,” or his and his sextet’s propensity for electronic spice in tunes like “Queen of Mondays” and “In Transit.” Of course, Dąbrowski’s got the brooding bluesy thing down to, with “JR” and “Short Gesture” equal parts fifties Miles Davis, Stanko and the composer himself. The Individual Beings embodies the idea of a student taking what he’s learned from a master, applying it to his own notions, and coming out with a distinctive and characteristic statement.