Jazz Articles about Komeda Project

Komeda Project: Requiem

by Stuart Broomer
March 3, 2010

Krzysztof Komeda is a figure of immense significance in Polish jazz, in effect the musician who both gave it its original authentic voice and marked its place in the world. In the 15 years before his death in 1969, Komeda was active as bandleader and film composer, scoring films by Roman Polanski like Two Men and a Wardrobe and Rosemary's Baby. Clearly influenced by Miles Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane, he found a profound affinity between modal jazz and ...

Komeda Project: Bringing New Life to a Legend

by Bruce Lindsay
February 23, 2010

Komeda Project is dedicated to the music of the great Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda. Komeda died young--days before his 38th birthday. During his relatively short life, he composed numerous film scores and jazz tunes and was responsible for the seminal album Astigmatic (Muza Records, 1965)--one of Jazzwise Magazine's “100 Jazz Albums that Shook the World." It is unsurprising, then, that a band would wish to pay tribute to such a musician, and tribute bands and tribute recordings are common enough ...

Komeda Project: Requiem

by Eyal Hareuveni
February 2, 2010

Komeda Project's Requiem is released 40 years after the untimely death of the great Polish composer and pianist Krzysztof Komeda, best known for his original soundtracks to Roman Polanski's films Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby, as well as his work with great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. The European-American Komeda ensemble--pianist/arranger Andrzej Winnicki, trumpeter Russ Johnson, saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna, and the new rhythm section of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Nasheet Waits--succeeds in updating Komada's compositions by reaching into ...

Komeda Project: Requiem

by Chris May
November 28, 2009

Despite the snowballing emergence of European jazz musicians on the world stage, relatively few European jazz composers have, in 2009, made it into the global repertory, which continues to be dominated by American voices. Perhaps it always will be, and perhaps local singularities--Italian or British or Scandinavian or whatever--are in any case better treasured, rather than absorbed into a single, universal body of work. But the fact remains that a cornucopia of great “foreign" compositions remains neglected in jazz's birth ...

Komeda Project: Requiem

by Budd Kopman
November 6, 2009

With the magnificent Requiem, pianist Andrzej Winnicki and saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna solidify and enhance their reputations as the prime promoters of the essential music of the Polish pianist and composer Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969). Komeda is widely recognized as the founder of modern Polish, and in a wider sense, European modern jazz. That he worked in Poland under Communist oppression is important. At its heart, jazz refuses to be pigeonholed, and it both allows and demands that its practitioners be utterly ...

Komeda Project: Requiem

by Jakob Baekgaard
November 4, 2009

There's an awareness which is located deep within human nature that we're subject to both positive feelings as well as destructive impulses: Love and death, Eros and Thanatos, exist side by side. All great art is a mirror of the human condition and nobody understood better than the Polish composer and pianist Krzysztof Komeda that life as well as music is composed of light and darkness.

The dual nature of Komeda's music is captured perfectly in one of his masterpieces, ...

The Komeda Project at the Cornelia Street Cafe

by Budd Kopman
November 15, 2007

Komeda ProjectCornelia Street CaféNew York, New YorkNovember 1, 2007 Jazz, because it is created in the moment by the performers pouring out their souls, has a way of getting inside you. Hearing jazz live, actually being there, intensifies the experience tenfold. Live jazz at the Cornelia Street Café is particularly rewarding because there is very little physical separation between the musicians and the audience. The Komeda Project at Cornelia Street was ...