From The Green Hill

Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko has plotted something of a musical world tour on From the Green Hill, a polyglot of styles rooted in different folk and traditional forms colliding and commingling over a bedrock of collective improvisations. Stanko's music is surely jazz, if the genre's defined as an international language and no longer simply an American art form--clearly rooted in American traditions, but a flexible flyer capable of transcending borders and incorporating the vocabulary and traditions of the musicians who create it. In that broader vein, From the Green Hill is a varied and satisfying recital, which clearly reflects the aesthetic of producer Manfred Eicher, who has been encouraging the development of post-modernist folk music and idiomatic European jazz inventions since the early 1970s. Stanko's dark, burnished sound brings to mind both Rex Stewart and Lester Bowie, as he favors broad, vocalized inflections and an expressive vocabulary of bends, growls, whinnies, and shouts. Yet, as his whimsical lead over the fat, lilting groove of bassist Anders Jormin and the airy, percussive accents and crystalline cymbal phrases of drummer Jon Christensen on "Pantronic" demonstrate, Stanko's is a decidedly lyrical approach. You can hear it on the lightly swinging "Love Theme from Farewell to Maria," as saxophonist John Surman's furry baritone italicizes Stanko's pungent phrasing. Elsewhere, the violin of Michelle Makarski and the bandoneon of Dino Saluzzi offer savory overtones from Warsaw, Paris, and Buenos Aires. --Chip Stern