The name of trumpet-player Tomasz Stanko has been more or less interchangeable with the notion of Polish jazz for over 40 years. But if Stanko developed as a globally-respected musician of unmistakable character, he never abandoned his homeland for the US, as he might have done. His Cambridge show was part of a tour for the Contemporary Music Network with a young Polish piano trio, led by an imposing talent in the spirited, rhythmically rock-steady Marcin Wasilewski.
Stanko's compositions tend toward the fragile and ethereal (writing for movies has been a significant feature of his career), but with a jazz undertow. That was the chemistry for this fine performance, with the music in the second half particularly proceeding with a suite-like seamlessness. Stanko, a gaunt and wiry 61-year-old, often stooped in contemplation of the work of his partners, and balanced his own astonishing clarity at low volumes against explosive climactic runs strongly tinged by the free-jazz-influenced phrasing and intensity Miles Davis was adopting by the mid-1960s.
The gig began meditatively, with Stanko playing soft, oblique short figures over a whispering but loose mid-tempo pulse - fleetingly suggesting the ambiguous lyricism of Kenny Wheeler. Then the contributions of the others swelled around him, with bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz demonstrating a penetrative sound and a kaleidoscope of fast-moving motifs. Drummer Michal Miskiewicz moved effortlessly between floating time and a kind of shyly determined grooving that eventually turned into a tumult.
The second half opened with alternations of smoky trumpet lyricism and churning free-improv urgency. Wasilewski often took the music closest to swing, and Stanko delivered a stinging solo on one burst of it, full of fast-tongued repeat notes, abrupt squalls, rumbling downward runs and sly half-valve sounds.
The band confirmed how readily it moves between moods, but a moment in which the leader was accompanied only by the sound of mallets on the tom-toms encapsulated Stanko's gifts - a tiny haiku of improvisation in soft, high trills and low, trombone-like sighs.
· At the Wardrobe, Leeds tonight. Box office: 0113-383 8800. Then touring.
