Maciej Sikała, Piotr Lemańczyk, Tyler Hornby - Able To Fly (2011)

As far as mainstream is concerned this album titled "Able To Fly" may be one of the best if not the best album so far recorded in Polish jazz this year. It is mainstream - yes, there no surprises here - yes but yet somehow depth, creativity and sheer beauty of the music wins over even such a free jazz die-hard as I am. In my opinion Piotr Lemańczyk deserves biggest applause since the sound of his double bass is like no other: deep, round, gravitational should be compared in quality with such masters as Dave Holland and Gary Peacock. He also has incredible streak of recent recordings like "Naha Poeple" (2009) featuring Tim Hagans or "Three Point Shot" (2010) with Jerry Bergonzi.

As for Maciej Sikała, he is a legend of yass movement in Poland, and recorded with Miłość band plenty of excellent music like this well-known record titled "Asthmatic" or albums with great American trumpeter Lester Bowie. Yass was the most important music phenomenon in Polish jazz in 90ties opening its language to avantgarde influences. It is quite interesting that after Miłość ended some musicians who created it has moved even deeper into avantgarde direction like Mikołaj Trzaska while others like Leszek Możdżer or Maciej Sikała have got back to mainstream. Sikała has established lasting relationship with outstanding Polish trumpeter Piotr Wojtasik (check his "Lonely Town") and, among others, with Lemańczyk as evidenced by his appearance on above mentioned "Naha Poeple".

Tyler Hornby is least-known figure to me, Canadian drummer, who back in 2007 issued a record in Poland with guitarist Maciej Grzywacz. He may count himself as fortunate to be invited by Lemańczyk and Sikała into this new project in 2008 which resulted in this exciting record now to be realeased. His drumming is energetic yet precise if somewhat too obvious at moments especially for so sensitive and creative line of Lemańczyk. 

Finally, I can only add that one rehearsal after another this recording brings me a lot of joy revealing more depth and causing more delight that many albums recorded by artists of much better-known names...