Hearing him this way — relaxed, surrounded by younger players who clearly cared — is a reminder of how much he gave to the music, and how lucky we are this afternoon wasn’t lost.
April Records
Johanna Elina Sulkunen – Vocal; Tomasz Dąbrowski – Trumpet; Snorri Sigurðarson – Trumpet; Thomas Hass – Saxophone; Martin Fabricius – Vibraphone; Artur Tuźnik – Piano; Richard Andersson – Double Bass; Radek Wośko – Drums; Tomasz Stańko – Trumpet
By the time Tomasz Stańko recorded The Copenhagen Session in 2016, he didn’t need to show anyone what he could do. He’d already built a lifetime of music — lyrical, restless, and full of quiet fire. This was different. It was a relaxed studio date with a group of younger Scandinavian musicians who admired him and wanted to see what might happen if they just played. The tapes sat around for years, and now we finally get to hear what happened.
The Copenhagen Session Vol. 2 opens with “So Nice,” starting with a quiet piano line and Stańko’s trumpet easing in like a voice finding its pitch. The bass and drums pick up bit by bit, the texture thickens, and a sax slips in behind them. About halfway through, the band starts to push harder. The horns chatter, the trumpet flutters in short bursts, and by the time Johanna Elina Sulkunen’s vocal enters — half hum, half moan — the whole thing has turned into a kind of swirl. Then, just as it peaks, everything softens and fades.
A tinkling piano that feels like falling rain opens “Morning Ballad.” For a while it’s just piano, moving between single-note lines and soft chords, more classical than jazz. When the bass and drums slip in, they barely disturb the calm. The voice is there, blending with the instruments rather than standing out. It all feels suspended, almost outside of time. When Stańko enters, his trumpet sounds both clear and distant, like a memory coming into focus. He stretches notes, smudges others, letting his phrases drift. The band follows his lead with a quiet patience that’s beautiful in its own right.
“Anti-Freeze” opens with a bass line that sounds calm on the surface but keeps circling like it’s caught in a loop. The drums add light snare hits and cymbal splashes, steady as a heartbeat. When the band joins in, the mood turns uneasy — dark, a little claustrophobic. It feels like the kind of film score Miles might have written: cool, tense, and full of quiet menace. Stańko’s trumpet moves through the mix in short, searching phrases while the piano answers with jagged bursts of sound. It’s one of the album’s most jazz-driven tracks, swinging in a crooked way, like something struggling to break free.
The Copenhagen Session Vol. 2 completes the portrait of a single remarkable day in 2016. That one session yielded two albums’ worth of material speaks to how present Stańko was — still curious, still listening, still reaching for new ideas late in his life. The fact that these tapes surfaced at all feels like a gift. Hearing him this way — relaxed, surrounded by younger players who clearly cared — is a reminder of how much he gave to the music, and how lucky we are this afternoon wasn’t lost.
