Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko died at 76. He was one of the last great heroes of European jazz: Video

Tomasz Stanko, a virtuoso Polish trumpet player and usually credited as one of the great names in European jazz, died Sunday in Warsaw, at age 76, the country’s public radio reported, citing a family source.

Stanko, a master of ballad art – who went to drink in the names of the great American jazz school, such as Miles Davis or Chet Baker – was considered the forerunner of free jazz in Europe. But over a career spanning more than four decades and more than four dozen albums, Stanko affirmed a brand of his own, which he also drank in the tradition of his country’s music, notably the pianist and composer Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969 ), with whom he played in the 1960s (Astigmatic disc, 1965), and who later came to pay homage to an album usually seen as one of the highlights of his career, Litania (ECM, 1997).

“To me, everything inspires me,” Stanko said one day in an interview with AFP now recalled by Jornal do Brasil. “The world offers us incredible amounts of genius works. Everywhere in the world, there have always been genius artists, and in our age of communication and information we can finally get to know them,” he added.

Born on July 11, 1942 in the city of Rzeszów in southeastern Poland, Tomasz Stanko grew up as a jazz musician listening to music on the Voz da América radio program, from the rare ones that crossed the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe of the West.

In recent years, Stanko often played in jazz clubs in New York, where he had a Manhattan apartment, and recorded with a band called New York Quartet.

His first global bestseller was a 1997 album, Litania, a tribute to the music of Polish film music composer and jazz pianist Krzysztof Komeda, the record company ECM Records said.

“I am in shock … (Stanko) was an absolute prophet, a great musician, and a consistent one,” said Michal Urbaniak, a Polish jazz violinist and saxophonist.