Tomasz Stańko Quintet

Dark Eyes is the 2009 studio debut of a new quintet led by Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, his first ECM group after three albums with the trio of pianist Marcin Wasilewski. The band draws on young players from Finland and Denmark, and an electric guitar and electric bass give his music a different ground. The grainy tone and the melancholy Slavic lyricism remain at the centre, now inside a more cinematic, darker sound.

Stańko has had strong ties to Finland since the early 1970s, and two Finns join him here: pianist Alexi Tuomarila and drummer Olavi Louhivuori. The Danes are guitarist Jakob Bro, cast mostly as a subtle colourist, and Anders Christensen, who plays electric bass throughout and supplies the pulse. The album was recorded in April 2009 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, with Gérard de Haro as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.

Eight of the ten pieces are new Stańko compositions, and several carry a place or an image. Grand Central and Amsterdam Avenue come from New York, and the ten-minute title piece, The Dark Eyes of Martha Hirsch, was inspired by an Oskar Kokoschka portrait at the Neue Galerie. Terminal 7 and May Sun were first written for Lars Norén's theatre productions in Warsaw and reworked in the studio. Samba Nova, a memory of a 2008 trip to Brazil, opens as an echoing ballad over a pedal tone before moving into a Brazilian groove. Two pieces by Krzysztof Komeda, Dirge for Europe and Etiuda baletowa nr 3, go back to Stańko's years with the composer, and Last Song returns to his first ECM album, Balladyna.

In Jazzwise, Stephen Graham called the record "unique in Stanko's discography in that it features the key presence of an electric guitar". John Bungey of The Times named it "one of the great European jazz albums of the year". Phil Johnson in the Independent on Sunday found that it improves the longer it goes on. In The Irish Times, Ray Comiskey noted that Stańko takes less solo space than expected, leaving room for Tuomarila and Louhivuori. Will Layman of PopMatters was cooler, hearing moments of monotony, but he also described the album as cinematic and singled out the elegant freedom of the title track.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2115, first released in October 2009.