… is a young Polish musician named Bartosz Leczycki. He played brilliant diatonic harmonica in lots of different styles, always very fresh and original, with very highly developed technique and harmonic conception, on a par with anyone I’ve heard. (I didn’t hear his chromatic playing, but I know he plays chromatic, and I have no doubt that it’s killer.)

Leczycki’s recordings on Myspace show all his virtues. The Raga piece simply amazed me, and everything else there is solidly and often brilliantly composed, arranged, and performed. On all of these pieces, the melodic and harmonic conceptions are strong and varied, and the playing is precise and powerful. Every aspect of technique is brilliantly rendered, including what I assume to be overblows–the technique is so smooth that I can’t be sure how the tone was produced–and the vibratos are killer.

Here’s a video of Bart playing hard blues with a Polish band. He takes an extended a capella harp solo at about 3 minutes in. It’s pretty heavy.




Check this guy out. Really.