Jazz breaking news: X Hits The Spot For The Marcin Wasilewski Trio And Robert Glasper’s Experiment At The London Jazz Festival

Faithful is the band's best album since Trio their remarkable debut recorded in 2004 that initially marked a coming of age and a new international phase for the Koszalin born pianist's trio, which first made an impact in Poland as the Simple Acoustic Trio before becoming the great Tomasz Stanko's band.

With the Warsaw trumpeter as a quartet they achieved some extraordinary creative peaks that were the prologue to further acclaim when Manfred Eicher signed them to ECM. Wasilewski who can channel Björk and Bill Evans as intuitively as he can Chopin and Szymanowski impressed most of all on Paul Bley's ‘Big Foot’, his reading of ‘Ballad Of The Sad Young Men’ and ‘Night Train To You’. Sławomir Kurkiewicz has real style, and like the best bassists is all about being there, a knowing presence while Michał Miśkiewicz moved into his own making his ride cymbal canter especially towards the end of the short set.

Later at XOYO, the Cowper Street venue was rammed for the Robert Glasper Experiment. Glasper, whose upcoming album Black Radio is due on Blue Note records in early-2012 featuring Mos Def on the title track, kicked off with Derrick Hodge’s electric bass guitar marking out the instantly recognisable riff of ‘A Love Supreme’, and Glasper settled in behind his Motif keyboards. Marc Colenberg at the kit chopped things up expertly with broken beats galore. Early numbers developed organically with nods to daisy age hip hop, Lennon and McCartney (‘Yesterday’) and Herbie Hancock, with the great Beatles song segueing via Casey Benjamin on vocodered vocals into Hancock’s ‘Butterfly’. Benjamin ripped it up on curved soprano and comped to effect on keytar as the crowd understandably lapped it up.

– Stephen Graham

Robert Glasper’s Kings Place concert tonight has now sold out