Jazz
The Stork Delivery · 2 October 2026
The fifth track on “Consistency” is called “Prologue”. It runs 4:44 and arrives after “Spontaneous Pragmatism”, by which point the record has been going for a good half hour. Putting the prologue in the middle is the most visible decision on a debut that otherwise goes straight at things.
Michał Skwierczyński is a Polish guitarist settled in Basel and a core member of the Basel Jazz Orchestra, which plays the city’s Bird’s Eye once a month. He took his degree at the Frost School of Music in Miami and his master’s in jazz pedagogy at the Jazzcampus in Basel, where he studied with Lionel Loueke, Brad Mehldau, Guillermo Klein, Jeff Ballard, Jorge Rossy and Lage Lund. All ten compositions are his, the record is out on his own label, and Wolfgang Muthspiel produces.
The quartet is filled out by Lorenzo Vitolo on piano, Grzegorz Włodarczyk on double bass and Yosuke Doki on drums. “Of Course” (6:36) opens with the warm-toned guitar circling Vitolo’s piano, in a statement you can follow from the first bar. “Tętention” (8:48) is where the pianist runs hardest, with clipped phrases darting right through the track. “Kołysanka” (2:48) is the only solo guitar piece, a lullaby. And “Die Zürich Episode” (8:59), the longest, closes out towards jazz-rock with Doki properly letting go.
Skwierczyński says he used a different guitar for every track. On the listening, the clean warm tone is near enough the same from “Of Course” to “Die Zürich Episode”, and the idea stays a workshop decision that barely crosses the mix. At sixty-six minutes across ten tracks the record could also use the scissors: “Spontaneous Pragmatism” (7:42) and the “Prologue” are the two points where the quartet plays very well without going anywhere.
He presents the album live on 3 December at Schall und Rauch in Basel.
Rating: 7.4/10
Text by Aina Torrents