Krysztof Komeda

[brownie]

Polish jazz musician and film music composer Krysztof Komeda has become

something of a cult figure since his tragic death in 1969. Komeda's main

claim to fame was the music he composed for his friend Roman Polanki's films

including 'Rosemary's Baby'. He also composed film music for a number of

Jerzy Skolimovsky's films including the 1966 film 'Le Depart' which

had Komeda's music performed by people like Don Cherry, Garo Barbieri

and Jean-Francois Jenny-Clark. I see a number of Komeda record albums popping up

here and there. Anybody knows if the sountrack to the 'Le Depart' film was

ever included in one of Komeda's albums?

'Le Depart' was a black-and-white film set in Belgium. French new wave actor

Jean-Pierre Leaud had the main part. The music was excellent.

[JohnS]

I can remember the impact the music had on me when I first saw Polanski's Knife in the Water. Though I think it was probably Bernt Rosengren's tenor that caught my ear then rather than Komeda's playing or writing.

There are about a dozen Komeda cds on Power Bros but I don't know about Le Depart

Edited April 28, 2003 by JohnS

[Claude]

Krzysztof Komeda - Le depart - Culture Publishers CPJ8-1032 (Japan)

http://www.geo.ryerson.ca/komeda/

http://www.komeda.vernet.pl/

Edited April 28, 2003 by Claude

[A Lark Ascending]

I have yet to hear Komeda's CDs but can strongly recommend Tomasz Stanko's celebration of his music, Litania, on ECM.

[JSngry]

Dusty Groove (the bastards!) have this guy's stuff out the wazzoo. I had no real idea who he was, but he sure seems to have been prolific!

[Green Dolphin]

Astigmatic is the one to start with,Stanko,in particular on great form.There's a live version also on Power Bros. featuring future violinist Michal Urbaniak on tenor-haven't heard it,anybody else done so?

[brownie]

Thanks for the posts. Claude seems to have nailed down the

soundtrack release (in Japan of course!!). Will have to get that one.

[king ubu]

Komedas work is published by a Polish record label, no possiblity to order online directly from them.

go here for info on Komeda:

Komeda Homepage

if you go for the discography, you'll see a list of his releases. The Poljazz issues seem to contain the early music which is also on the Power Bros. series discs. And the single Power Bros. releases also seem identical with the corresponding discs from the Power Bros. series. Anyone happens to know whether the Power Bros. series is sort of a complete documentation of Komeda's music, and whether they are available elsewhere but via the Power Bros. website? (as they don't accept direct credit card orders, it seems to be quite complicated to get this stuff from them, I figure)

(I can still kick my ass for not picking up all the Komeda stuff when visiting Poland some 3 or 4 years ago - but they had such good prices and quite some OOP US-releases, that I could not buy all the stuff I would have liked - jazz fan's destiny )

ubu

[king ubu]

now this site seems to answer some questions - and it was not the Power Bros. series but the seemingly 23-volume-series on Polonia which I passed by (f*****g s**t!)

[Teasing the Korean]

Finally saw "Cul-de-Sac" last night, which has been hard to find in the US. I've had the music since the late 1990s. It was a good film, not as good as "Knife in the Water" in my opinion but dealing with similar themes.

The music as heard in the film is pretty sparse. The soundtrack releases typically consist of 6 tracks from the film, and then adding either 1 or 2 more tracks of EZ versions that presumably came out as a single. There are, I believe, 2 tracks in the film that are not on any of the releases I have. I wonder if these will make their way out or if they are lost.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Teasing the Korean

[StarThrower]

I have the Polskie Nagrania reissue of Zbigniew Namyslowski's Winobranie album. Great stuff! Grooves Inc has good prices on Polish jazz.

Edited January 20, 2013 by starthrower

[Teasing the Korean]

I picked up the twofer CD with the soundtracks to "Le Depart" and "Bariera." So far I have listened to the former but did digital needledrops on the latter.

"Depart" sounds like parts were taken directly from the film's soundtrack; other parts may be from the film's mono music stem. Not the best fidelity, but cool music.

"Bariera" sounds like it's from a better source, from my random samplings. I will check it out tomorrow.

[Teasing the Korean]

So I have:

Cul-de-Sac

Knife in the Water

Rosemary's Baby

Fearless Vampire Killers

Le Depart

Bariera

Astigmatic.

"Astigmatic" is the only non-soundtrack album I have by Komeda. There seems to be a general consensus that it is his best and/or "most important" jazz album.

​Are there other albums by Komeda that anyone can recommend?

[kh1958]

Live at the Jazz Jamboree Festival, 1961-1967.

http://www.amazon.com/Krzysztof-Komeda-Live-Jamboree-Festival/dp/B00EVLPK7M/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1424836913&sr=1-1&keywords=komeda+jamboree

Edited February 25, 2015 by kh1958

[sgcim]

David Amram mentioned him in "Vibrations" (his first autobiography) as training some of the European musicians he worked with when he was stationed in Europe during his stint in the army.

[Teasing the Korean]

Hour-long documentary:

 

[sgcim]

Fascinating documentary, thanks for posting. From what I had read of him, I thought he was a much older guy, because he had so much influence on Polish musicians.

Dead at 37, after becoming an E,N &T doctor, and then scoring 65 films.

There's a good doc. on the composer William Walton on you tube called "At the Haunted End of the Day" that I tried to post a link to, but it wouldn't paste for some reason.

WW scored all of the Olivier Shakespeare films.