Death of trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, precursor of free jazz

Master in the art of ballad, this trumpet player had developed an aesthetic between bebop tradition, free skids and improvised contemporary music. His performances alongside other giants of the world jazz, and his forty records, especially for the German label ECM which he was one of the pillars, have earned him many awards and awards both in the United States and Europe . He was the first laureate of the European Jazz Prize of the Austrian Music Office in 2002. The French Academy of Jazz awarded him the 2013 European Musician Award.

"Everything inspires me", he said in a interview with AFP, a dozen years ago. "The world offers us incredible quantities of geniuses, in every corner of the globe, there have always been genius artists, and in our age of communication and information we can finally get to know them," he said.

Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet – December Avenue

"Everything Inspired Me"

A native of Rzeszow, he was part of a generation of Polish jazzmen who became enthusiastic in the 1960s for this new musical language, thanks in particular to the "Voice of America" ​​programs and the first jazz records that could have crossed the Iron Curtain. "For me, it all started with modern jazz: Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Chet Baker," said Stanko. It was while listening to them that he exchanged the clbadical piano and violin for the jazz trumpet. "At the time, I was immersed in existentialism, the new wave of French cinema and Italian neo-realism: painting, books by Faulkner and Joyce, bohemian Parisian … Everything inspired me "

" Encounters with people are very important, "he said, as did the concert venue: whether it was in the sumptuous silence of the Taj Mahal Indian mausoleum or in a theater by the orange revolutionary fever of Ukraine.