Marcin Wasilewski Trio, Joakim Milder

Spark Of Life is the fourth ECM album by the Polish trio of the pianist Marcin Wasilewski, and adds a guest, the Swedish tenor saxophonist Joakim Milder. It sets melodic originals by Wasilewski, including two versions of the title track, against a wide choice of covers. These range from Krzysztof Komeda and Herbie Hancock to The Police, the Polish rock band Hey and the composer Grażyna Bacewicz.

Wasilewski and the bassist Sławomir Kurkiewicz began playing together as teenage students in Koszalin, and the drummer Michał Miśkiewicz completed the line-up in 1993. First known as the Simple Acoustic Trio, they became the band of Tomasz Stańko at the end of the 1990s, recording Soul of Things, Suspended Night and Lontano with him. They knew Milder from Stańko's Komeda project Litania. Earlier in 2014 they had also been Jacob Young's rhythm section on Forever Young. This album was recorded in March 2014 at the Auditorio RSI in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher.

The trio opens alone with Austin, and Milder enters on Sudovian Dance. Komeda's Sleep Safe and Warm, from Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, simmers over a pedal point before breaking into its familiar changes. Hancock's Actual Proof moves from electric to acoustic piano without losing its funk, and Kurkiewicz arranged the Largo by Bacewicz. Milder contributes his own irregularly metered Still, and the title track returns at the end as a trio piece. In its first version Milder states the melody with great restraint, and the rubato pace leaves Miśkiewicz room for textural detail.

In The Guardian, John Fordham called the trio "one of the best to appear on the European jazz scene in the past decade", and found Milder "a shadowy but fascinating presence". Bobby Reed made it an Editor's Pick in DownBeat, hearing in Wasilewski "a refined sense of melody and great touch" and a debt to Bill Evans. Fred Grand of Jazz Journal heard a slow-burning success that rarely raises its voice.

This is the CD edition of ECM 2400, released in October 2014.