Transatlantyk is quite a new band on Polish ethno/jazz scene. Consisting of experienced and highly acclaimed artists on different musical scenes that have met up under Michał Żak’s leadership and his search for a new language in dance and improvised music.
Transatlantyk, like a ship in Witold Gombrowicz’s novel, is sailing against the current, defiantly, contrary to form, yet being the form, in the ethos of tradition or something else entirely; it is a migration from the cities to the villages, from the shiny night clubs to forgotten, dirty fire-stations, dump, cold and covered with the asbestic tile, quite disgusting but right in the middle of hauntingly beautiful nature. The idyll ruthlessly plowed through, the roads full of potholes, somewhere between Kocudza and Tomaszów Lubelski, where the noisy bus is dragging from one tin bus stop to the next, bluntly missing the turn to the wildest springs, where the birds are busy making music, a hundred yards from the loveliness. Polish grotesque. This music is the freedom beyond the pathos.
Line up:
- Michał Żak – leader of the ship, multi-instrumentalist and improviser responsible for Polish traditional music revival, member of Janusz Prusinowski Trio, Lautari or Tęgie Chłopy, Love Tree Ensemble, Maisha, Michał Żak & Aleksander Dębicz duo and other bands. Website: www.michalzak.pl
- Ula Czerniak – bassist, Chopin’s and disco music lover, teacher and Lublin’s Symphony Orchestra’s first double bass player
- Szymon Miśniak – drummer, sound engineer, producer and recording studio manager as well as the chef himself
Featuring:
- Piotr Damasiewicz – trumpeter and pianist extraordinaire, pilgrim and founder of L.A.S. Foundation (Listening and Sounding)
Although the band was formed just recently, the members have cooperated for nearly 20 years, playing widely on stages or recording folk, traditional or contemporary classical albums. Each of the „Transatlantyk crew” has a colorful and flamboyant story to tell, which they proved already on stages of such festivals as Folk Baltica (Flensburg, Germany 2022) or Lublin Jazz Festival (Lublin, Poland, 2023). Also, the band has released it’s debut album in October 2023, titled: „Młynka kreci”.
Reviews
Congratulations for TRANSatlantyk. The trick was done – it sounds utterly modern and yet from here. They are going on tour with Sons of Kemet :).
Maciej Nestor | V-Records
The result is music that fits into an intriguing trend of a new tradition, work that draws from the past but does not turn it into a museum relic. TRANSatlantyk’s recordings are not a sound open-air museum but a revival and construction of new contexts. Perhaps detached from facts, but wonderfully soaring into areas of unrestrained creative expression.
Rafał Zbrzeski (Radio Cracow) | Jazz Forum 1-2/24
TRANSatlantyk is a living example of how jazz romances Polish folk music without committing any misalliance. (…) The sound of authentic, traditional instruments and jazz improvisation revive on stage the spirit, energy and noise, which evoke associations with both ecstatic concerts of American jazz musicians and frivolous events outside the mainstream, which our relatives remember dating back to the 20th century “All this is surprisingly modern and sublime at the same time. Over 600 hands sore from applause during the concert at the Lublin Jazz Festival expressed their delight with this phenomenon.
Arkadiusz Kaźmierak | Lublin Jazz Festiwal
Gentle Trance, Deep Trance. If the TRANSatlantyk band’s album is extraordinary and worthy of great interest, it is due to its musical, compositional and performance values; because of the coherent idea – sound, arrangement, and in some sense, let’s say, philosophical. (…) The name of the band is not accidental. Folk sources, folk inspirations, jazz, world music, freedom of improvisation, but also elements of modernity – rapping or a kind of trance in a few fragments – create a specific and exciting musical conglomerate.
Tomasz Janas