Joe Lovano, Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz, Michal Miskiewicz

CD version. Homage is the second ECM album by American saxophonist Joe Lovano with the trio of Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski, five years after Arctic Riff (2020). Where that record leaned on lyricism, this one opens up to free-flowing interplay and long stretches of improvisation. Five of the six pieces are Lovano originals, and three of them run between eight and twelve minutes. Lovano often sets down his tenor saxophone and tárogató to play gongs and hand percussion.

The trio is completed by bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz, in what Mike Gates of UK Vibe calls one of ECM's longest-standing piano-led trios. Long tours shaped the music, and a week at New York's Village Vanguard in 2023 worked as an impromptu rehearsal. The album was recorded in November 2023 at Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey, engineered by Maureen Sickler with Don Sickler assisting. It was mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich in October 2024, and Manfred Eicher produced it.

The opener is Love In The Garden by the Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert, arranged on the spot as a rubato ballad, the tenor floating over flowing piano harmonies. Golden Horn hints at the four-note motif of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme before turning into fast, linear post-bop. Wasilewski takes a driving solo, and Lovano moves to hand drums beside Miskiewicz before returning on the Hungarian tárogató. The title track was written for the 2023 concert in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie celebrating Eicher's 80th birthday, and it is dedicated to him and the label. It shifts between keys, and Lovano names Gunther Schuller, Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell among its influences. Giving Thanks is a short piece for solo tenor.

British critics responded warmly. John Fordham in The Guardian called This Side - Catville an album highlight, balancing "a snappy short-phrase melody and rolling free-groove". In The Arts Desk Sebastian Scotney admired the "poise and gentleness" of the opening track and wrote that Lovano "has found the ideal context to play with a remarkable spontaneity and freedom." Gates gave the album five stars.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2845, released in April 2025.