Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Matka Joanna (1995)

After three fleeting appearances on ECM in the two decades prior, only one of them as leader, Tomasz Stańko stepped into Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the spring of 1994 to make the label his primary home for the rest of his life.  One wonders if Manfred Eicher listened to Bosonossa and heard a career renaissance in the making that he simply had to have on his roster - not least because the trumpeter's sense of space was just crying out for the sympathetic ear of Jan-Erik Kongshaug.

The Bosonossa quartet was imported intact, with Tony Oxley's eerie percussion introducing Monastery In The Dark like echoing footsteps on ancient stone floors.  The inspiration for this album was Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film Matka Joanna od Aniołów (Mother Joan of the angels), for which much of this unsettling, spacious music could've made a good soundtrack.  Stańko, Stenson and Jormin all work together brilliantly, but the star turn in the quartet definitely belongs to Oxley here, right through to the closing percussion solo where the nunnery's malevolent spirits are finally exorcised.

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