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Krzysztof Medyna
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 ...
read moreKomeda Project: Requiem
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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Music
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy feat. Jeremy Pelt
From: From a Familiar PlaceBy Krzysztof Medyna
Kattorna
From: Crazy GirlBy Krzysztof Medyna