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WM Project: From a Familiar Place
by Dan McClenaghan
The WM Project, led by saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna and pianist Andrzej Winnicki, doesn't sound much like the Komeda Project. Medyna and Winnicki have earned well-deserved acclaim for their work in that ensemble that explores the music of their countryman, Krzysztof Komeda. But here, instead of the Polish melancholy, haunting themes and brooding melodies, they take From A Familiar Place into the more American realm of straight ahead, at times even brash bebop with, always, big solid grooves. Two ...
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by Stuart Broomer
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 ...
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by Eyal Hareuveni
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 ...
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by Chris May
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 ...
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by Budd Kopman
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 ...
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by Jakob Baekgaard
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, ...
read moreKomeda Project: Crazy Girl
by Michael P. Gladstone
This album is a rather unusual one, dedicated to 1960s Polish film scorer Krzysztof Komeda, who wrote music for films of the young Roman Polanski and Andraej Wajda. Some of the music on Crazy Girl was used for Polanski's, Rosemary's Baby (1968). Polanski used Komeda's music in almost all of his own films dating back to 1957's Two Men and a Wardrobe, and for the next decade, and credits Komeda with having composed the only major European soundtrack hit of ...
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by C. Michael Bailey
In a too brief but productive life, Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969) composed in excess of forty film scores. These film scores include such Polish cinematic gems as Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water and Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorcerers. Komeda's first score for the screen was Polanski's first film, Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958). In the same way that Sam Peckenpaw used the same actors for his films, so Polanski would do with Komeda in almost all of his films from ...
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by Alain Londes
The Komeda Project jazz quintet originated with Breakwater, the jazz group founded by pianist Andrzej Winnicki and saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna. Rounding out the group with Canadian bassist Michael Bates, drummer Dave Anthony and trumpeter/flugelhornist Russ Johnson, The Komeda Project pays homage to the great Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969), one of the founders of modern Polish jazz. Komeda reached international audiences through scoring a number of movies for Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda.
Over half of Crazy Girl's selections are Komeda-penned, largely ...
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by Elliott Simon
The legacy of the great Polish jazz composer/pianist Krzysztof Komeda runs especially deep, while straddling the worlds of film music and modern jazz. While his life was sadly cut short in 1969 at the age of 38, his compositional output included more than sixty film scores and the influential European classic Astigmatic (Power Bros, 1966), with trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. Despite Hollywood credentials that boast the hit soundtrack for Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, the Komeda Project's Crazy Girl reveals that Komeda ...
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