A-TRANE PRESENTS:
Marcin Wasilewski Trio
ECM 30th Anniversary Tour 2024
FEAT: Slawomir Kurkiewicz - Michal Miskiewicz

Marcin Wasilewski Trio

Established in 1990 by 15 years old students of music high school: pianist Marcin Wasilewski and bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz, who were joined in 1994 by drummer Michal Miskiewicz (17 years old at the time), has been playing in this unchanged line-up ever since. The trio has achieved international recognition for their exceptional talent and ability to captivate audiences, leaving a lasting impression with their powerful and emotionally charged performance with depth and sheer musicality.

The Marcin Wasilewski Trio is celebrating their 30th anniversary in style, and we invite you to be a part of their extraordinary journey. The trio has achieved international recognition for their exceptional talent and ability to captivate audiences, leaving a lasting impression with their powerful and emotionally charged performance with depth and sheer musicality.
For the past three remarkable decades, the Marcin Wasilewski Trio has graced the world of jazz with their extraordinary talent and unwavering commitment to musical excellence, becoming synonymous with innovation and storytelling through their music. Their remarkable journey includes collaborations with jazz luminaries like Tomasz Stanko, Joe Lovano, Charles Lloyd and more, along with the release of seven exceptional albums under the ECM Records label.
In their native Poland, they are unquestionable jazz stars, with their exceptional contributions to the music landscape. Throughout their career, they have maintained a consistent standard of artistry, connecting deeply with audiences and leaving an indelible mark on the global jazz community.
In Poland Wasilewski enjoys to be the laureate of the biggest number of FRYDERYK Music Awards in jazz categories (11 stattuettes of Fryderyk, incl. 5 x Jazz Album Of the Year, 6 x Jazz Artist Of The Year). The FRYDERYK Award’s name refers to the original Polish spelling of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin’s first name, and its status in the Polish public can be compared to the American Grammy.
The Marcin Wasilewski Trio has once again been voted the Best Acoustic Band for 2023 in Poland in the Annual Jazz Forum Magazine’s „Jazz Top 2023“ Reader’s Poll. „In the category of acoustic bands, the Marcin Wasilewski Trio has remained unrivaled for a considerable period,“ as stated in Jazz Forum’s editorial comment (JFM stands as the oldest and most esteemed Polish jazz publication. The trio consistently reaffirms its leading position in the Polish jazz scene.

In 2005 and 2011 Marcin Wasilewski was voted „piano rising star” in DownBeat Magazine’s Critics and Readers Polls. Four albums of the Trio („Live” 2018, „January” 2008, „Faithful” 2011 and „Spark Of Life” 2014) were also ranked on the Billboard’s Jazz Album Charts, while in Germany, the band was nominated for the German Jazz Award 2022 (Deutscher Jazzpreis) in the Best International Band category.

Continuing to carry the torch of the Polish jazz tradition from Krzysztof Komeda, through Tomasz Stanko, to the world, the Marcin Wasilewski Trio stands as a testament to the enduring legacy of Polish jazz on the global stage.

”Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s trio is one of the best to appear on the European jazz scene in the past decade”

The Guardian

“There’s a galaxy of piano trios in today’s jazz universe, but few shine as bright as Marcin Wasilewski’s”

The BBC Music Magazine

“Their years together have resulted in an ensemble with an utterly symbiotic creative flow,”

Don Heckman The Los Angeles Times

„Here the trio shows all its class as master builders of layerd musical structures that captivate and fascinate despite their calmness. 
… an album of extremely high artistic value.”

Ralf Henke, LP Magazin

“Wasilewski’s music celebrates a vast dynamic range, from the most deftly struck pianistic delicacies to gloriously intense emotional exuberance, the chords pounded with unrestrained joy, yet always within a marvellously melodic concept.”

Jazz Journal

„one of the greatest jazz piano trios the world currently has to offer.”

Peter Jones, London Jazz News

“This trio is now one of the finest in jazz, its mutual ease and intuition something to marvel at” “Musically and extra-musically it remains a co-operative; Wasilewski’s a kind of aural painter who puts the colours on the group’s canvases while the others shape and highlight them, in a kind of impressionism that allows the trio’s fluid interaction free rein and permits the band to evoke, sustain and resolve a considerable mood spectrum.”

Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times

“Marcin Wasilewski does not think like other jazz pianists. His improvisational underpinning, his sense of musical space and his aural imagery are so fresh they are initially mysterious, then get more so. …It takes nerve for a young trio to create music of such stillness, such patience. The fact that the three have played together since they were teenagers is audible in the way they trust the epiphanies they collectively come upon.”

Jazz Times

Marcin Wasilewski- Piano
Slawomir Kurkiewicz- Double- Bass
Michal Miskiewicz- Drums
Photos © Bartosz Maciejewski / ECM Records