Following on from my post about Gretchen Parlato last week, I’ve decided to instigate a new regular feature on this blog for your listening pleasure, dear reader: the jazz/pop cover of the week.  Snappy title, no?  As I wrote in my review of Parlato’s latest recording, it’s been a long tradition of jazz musicians to take the popular music of the day and adapt it for their own purposes – literally, to jazz it up.

So, here’s the plan.  Every Thursday I will stick another example of this practice up here so you can have a listen and judge for yourselves whether or not these attempts work.  Certainly some succeed better than others.  To begin with, I offer you a beautiful cover of the Prince ballad, Diamonds and Pearls, by the Marcin Wasilewski Trio.  This comes from their excellent recent ECM album, January.

These guys are still pretty young, and they made their name playing with the Polish master trumpeter, Tomaz Stanko.  They bring an intense lyricism to their work which I love.  Have a listen to their reworking of Prince’s tune.  To be honest, I was never a huge fan of the original tune, but this I like a lot.  I’d love to know what you think.  Enjoy.