With this album, Poland’s most striking violin player since Michal Urbaniak has arrived at the discovery many jazz virtuosi have made, that virtuosity as a-thing-in-itself can overwhelm expression, or as he puts it on the publicity notes, 'I want to tell a story, and to shape and balance simplicity'.

It could well be that he arrived at that point during his album Sacrum Profanum in 2019 with his rhythm section of Dys, Barański and Fortuna, who also appear here to excellent effect. It was an album where the profundity of the melodies, one dating back to the 13th century, demanded a response that respected the subject matter at hand. This thinking seems to have shaped Poetry where he adds Marek Konarski on tenor sax, who grew up in the same town as him, and the Sardinian trumpet player Paolo Fresu, who knows a thing to two about getting to the heart of melody, in an album that for all its warmth and beauty is as poetic, in other words, expresses emotions in a sensitive or moving way – as the album title implies. With 10 original compositions of precisely focussed moods plus ‘Hyperballad’ by Björk, the compositions that provide the biggest spaces for improvisation – ‘I Remember’ and ‘Open Sky’ – number among the album highlights, together with pieces such as ‘Grace’ using a Renaissance violin (almost a 7th below a violin, whereas a viola is a fifth below) whose tone adds a sense of gravitas and profundity in Bałdych’s hands.