Vamze Wybrańczyk: Akvæn

For some time, the name of Patrycja Wybrańczyk (drums) has been travelling from Poland (she lives in Gdańsk) to Denmark and Norway. It was in 2022, at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, that she met the Latvian tenor saxophonist Inga Vamze (who lives in Copenhagen).

Wybrańczyk has collaborated on around 20 albums across a variety of ensemble formats. She is thus one of the four drummers in Paal Nilssen-Love's Extra Large Unit (Steam Waterfall, NPL Records, 2026), a member of the all-woman quartet O.N.E. (Well, actually..., April Records, 2025), and has also been heard filling in for Veslemøy Narvesen on the very fine Live at Kafé Hærverk (Trost Records, 2026) by the sextet Amalie Dahl's Dafnie.

We had been eagerly awaiting a solo or duo album to pin down her musical personality more precisely still. That is what we have here: an album of 10 improvisations that also gives us the opportunity to hear Vamze in the role of the second dialogist. An 11th improvisation was released on the Polish drummers' compilation Portrety 3 (U Know Me Records, 2026).

For this album, Wybrańczyk and Vamze met again in Copenhagen and triangulated the North and Baltic seas, the centroid of the three countries. The title follows an elegant logic tied to the content. Akvæn derives from the Polish word akwen ("body of water"). The letter ash, shared by the Danish and Norwegian alphabets, brings the sea into the word. The "w" becomes a "v," which further connects the three countries through a shared pronunciation.

Like the surface of all seas, that of the Baltic and North seas is subject to multiple dynamics: it emerges glassy, rippled, undulating, choppy, swelling, heavy, raging. These states are the inspiration for the album.

Wybrańczyk is a drummer of subtle contrasts. A former student of Gard Nilssen and Thomas Strønen, she provides a rhythmic framework in which the shifting intensity of the drums is matched by airy, refined cymbal work. All the timbres are there and clear. They occupy different sonic planes that overlap in counterpoint.

Vamze's saxophone also plays across several levels, and it is here that the tenor's possible roughnesses echo those of the water's surface. Before the source of the album's inspiration was known, AAJ's listening notes on Vamze read: The majestuous "Akvæn": vibrating like wind resonating through a conch shell or shrouds humming on a sailboat. The breath is sustained, long and slender like a wake ("Air"); the sound is thick and dense like the wave train of the swell ("Dense"); simple melodies bask in the sun on a windless sea ("Core I" and "Core II"). The saxophone's body explores and resonates in the depths, searching for some creature ("Quiet"). All the while, the drums sing and the cymbals ring with clarity.

Wybrańczyk sculpts the water's surface and Vamze paints it. Or... perhaps the opposite? A subtle and engaging maritime duo either way!