Jazz Articles about Russ Johnson

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, ...

Tommy Meier: Root Down

by AAJ Italy Staff
April 1, 2008

L'Africa, nelle sue radici più profonde e sofferte. Quella dei musicisti sudafricani in esilio (od auto-esilio, come nel caso del pianista bianco Chris McGregor), o delle canzoni di protesta contro lo sfruttamento (un cenno a “Colonial Mentality" di Fela Kuti) o la corruzione e la tirannia ("Zombie", sempre di Fela Kuti). E però anche l'Africa dei musicisti più sperimentali svizzeri. Di chi ha decenni di militanza sulla scena radicale (Irène Schweitzer) e di chi invece, per ragioni puramente anagrafiche, sta ...

Komeda Project: Crazy Girl

by Michael P. Gladstone
July 1, 2007

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 ...

Komeda Project: Crazy Girl

by C. Michael Bailey
June 21, 2007

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 ...

Komeda Project: Crazy Girl

by Alain Londes
June 16, 2007

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 ...

Komeda Project: Crazy Girl

by Elliott Simon
June 11, 2007

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 ...

Komeda Project: Crazy Girl

by Budd Kopman
May 30, 2007

Crazy Girl by the Komeda Project, a quintet founded by pianist Andrzej Winnicki and saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna, is a very exciting project. It aims to bring the music of Krzysztof Komeda, its beauty, emotional intensity and logical yet dramatic structure, to a wider audience.

While the jazz ethos is universal, Komeda's music distills the essence of Poland and pours it into the jazz bottle. Widely acclaimed as one of the prime creators of modern Polish, if not European jazz, Komeda's ...