We formed the group in 2001. Since 2003, it has consisted of  six permanent members and numerous guest performers, with whom we occasionally form expanded line-ups. Over the years,  we have performed with around fifty solo musicians from many  countries, as well as with several other ensembles, including  orchestras. The Cavaliers’ work combines intuition with the free  jazz tradition and composition. The group brings together specialists in shaping musical space: performing composers, improvisers and other musicians who are difficult to categorise by  genre: let’s call them “alternative.” The group currently includes  Jerzy Kornowicz, piano; Krzysztof Knittel, electronic instruments; Tadeusz Wielecki, double bass; Tadeusz Sudnik, groovebox; Ryszard Latecki, trumpet; and Mieczysław Litwiński, vocals,  historical and folk instruments.

We perform in many European countries, sometimes in smaller  ensembles. In unusual venues (meadows and forests, riverbanks,  city squares) as well as in concert halls and at festivals such as  Warsaw Autumn, Chopin and His Europe, Musica Polonica  Nova, Ad Libitum, Kody, and in recent years in Bucharest, Lviv,  Moscow, Berlin, Minsk, and Brussels. Since 2004, we have been  running the annual National Gathering of New and Used Sounds:  workshops for enthusiasts of improvisation and live composition.  Each member of the group also pursues individual creative activities; each does so in a distinctive manner and has been publicly  recognised for many years.

We engage in a form of musical hermeneutics. We present distinctive sonic treatises on various themes; a theatre of ideas. We are  mindful of the anthropological dimension of the issues we address.  We undertake cultural explorations and conduct studies into various musical and cultural phenomena. We express our thoughts  through improvised compositions; nevertheless, the key elements  of our musical expressions are clearly defined. For example, we  have explored the phenomenon of Chopin’s music (The Chopin  Archipelago), popular song (Cavalry Songbook), the identity of  European cities (Sonosphere – Metropolises and Myths), the identity of the Polish–Ukrainian and Polish–Belarusian borderlands  (Dream of Podlasie), the nature of the mazurka tripartite rhythm  (Straight from the Oven), the relationship between traditional  music and contemporary improvisation (Scenes from the Boundless), and an exploration of the common rhythmic cells found  in folk music and our improvisation (Grains). One of our projects involved an almost orchestral improvisation (20 musicians)  based on the structural outline of Witold Lutosławski’s Livre pour  Orchestre. The project centred on the universality of the perfect  closed form. We were exploring how this form works in sonic  worlds other than that of Lutosławski’s music. Over the years, we  have performed around 30 different concert programmes.

In 2012, the group recorded the album Scenes from the Boundless  together with the European School of Traditional Singing Ensemble, produced by the Rozdroża Centre for Intercultural Creative  Initiatives in Lublin.