Homage (2025)

"Joe Lovano, that giant American elder of jazz reeds-playing, nowadays seems to be simmering all his decades of timeless tunes and exquisite passing phrases down to essences. The 72-year-old Ohio-born sax star and occasional drummer’s partners here are Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s collectively freethinking trio. The shape of "Homage" was formed on extensive tours with them, and a week in 2023 at New York’s Village Vanguard club that acted as an impromptu rehearsal. Song-rooted American jazz-making and give-and-go European free-jazz have become intertwined within Lovano’s later-life soundworld. The recording session apparently captured five hours of these exchanges, so with luck a second volume of this hearteningly harmonious and spontaneous music-making is already in the pipeline." (The Guardian)