Tomasz Stańko

Selected Recordings is volume 17 of ECM's :rarum series, in which artists compiled music from their own ECM catalogue. Tomasz Stańko chose twelve pieces recorded between 1975 and 1998 and drawn from seven albums. They run from Balladyna, his debut for the label, to From the Green Hill. Along the way come his guest appearances with two other leaders and two themes by Krzysztof Komeda, the Polish composer whose closest musical associate he had been.

Tale and Balladyna come from the quartet session of December 1975 at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, with Dave Holland on bass and Edward Vesala on drums. A year later Stańko played on Vesala's Satu, which supplies their joint composition Together. Moor, by Gary Peacock, is from the bassist's Voice From The Past - Paradigm, recorded in Oslo in August 1981. Two thirds of the disc belong to the 1990s, with four pieces by the quartet with pianist Bobo Stenson, from Matka Joanna (1994) and Leosia (1996). The Komeda themes come from Litania (1997) and two more tracks from the 1998 sessions for From the Green Hill. Manfred Eicher is credited as producer.

The disc opens with Tales for a Girl, 12 from Matka Joanna, at nine minutes the longest track on the disc. Sleep Safe and Warm, one of three versions of the Komeda lullaby on Litania, is reduced to trumpet and piano in Stańko's arrangement. The two pieces from From the Green Hill show the wider palette of that band. Pantronic sets the trumpet against the violin of Michelle Makarski, while Quintet's Time adds the bandoneon of Dino Saluzzi and the bass clarinet of John Surman.

The twenty :rarum volumes appeared between 2002 and 2004, each selected by the artist and digitally remastered. On its page for Balladyna, ECM quotes Stańko: "My international name was built on Balladyna." Here its two tracks are placed apart, Tale fourth and the title piece last. Reviewing the disc in 2020 on Between Sound and Space, Tyran Grillo heard it as "a shuffled timeline of progress".

This is the CD edition, :rarum 17 (014 209-2), released on 26 January 2004 in the second batch of the series, volumes 9 to 20. It comes in a digipak with booklet.