KRZYSZTOF KOMEDA QUINTET
Astigmatic
Polish Jazz vol.5

Label: Polskie Nagrania - Muza , 1965/2007
Catalogue No: PNCD 1005
Format: CD ( 2007, Digi-Pack Polish Jazz Deluxe Edition)

"Essential European Jazz"
(Penguin Guide for Jazz)

"Mr. Komeda was an excellent composer. Like the works of Wayne Shorter and Billy Strayhorn, his jazz ballads were full of romantic unease, but they often didn’t suggest a complete, scripted emotion. Their melodies are expressed in long notes and lines that sometimes seem to be missing a few important pieces or a resolution; they’re mysterious and fragmentary, leaving you to guess the rest. As a jazz bandleader, Mr. Komeda remains barely known in the United States. (Too bad: his quintet record “Astigmatic,” from 1966, with Mr. Stanko in the group, is one of the great jazz records of its time.)"
(Ben Ratliff, The New York Times, 5/21/2008)

Tracks:

1. Astigmatic 22:50
2. Kattorna 07:20
3. Svantetic 15:50

All music by Krzysztof Komeda

Recorded:

December 1965, at the Warsaw Philharmonics Hall, Warsaw, Poland

Performed by:

Tomasz Stanko - trumpet
Zbigniew Namyslowski - alto sax
Krzysztof Komeda - piano
Gunter Lenz - bass
Rune Carlsson - drums

About:

Innovator with a complex of tradition, romanticist expressing himself in the contemporary idiom, poet of piano — this is KRZYSZTOF KOMEDA, one of those musicians who have widened the essence of jazz.

He has proved that the world of emotions hitherto remaining within the scope of symphony music could manifest itself in jazz as well. He did it by introducing into it dramatic lyricism and pathos which in their ecstatic, even mystic intensity are in the late-romantic, Promethean, Skriabin-like modes of expression.

This new aesthetics in jazz required its new form. Instead of the static conventional sets of variations, preceding without direction, he has initiated a dramatic form which develops from the exposition towards culmination and final solution. This form, let us call it roughly "the bow form", has been used in two major pieces by Komeda recorded on this disc: Astigmatic and Svantetic (after Svante Forster, Swedish poet and writer, friend of the composer). The solo parts have ceased in it to be blowing choruses and have taken on instead a definite function, while the simple construction of the piece, concentration on a single idea (one movement, one theme), as well as much scope for improvisation and the psychic contact between the players contribute to the fullest realization of the composition.

The dramatic and constructional elements are not the only characteristics of Komeda's style. The particular „Slavonic" feeling of his pieces results from the fusion of all sorts of stuff: beside contemporary technique of composition (sound spots, clusters, aleatoric and poliagogic structures) there are structures getting out of fashion (modalism or the extinct harmonics of the last century) or the "fossilized", long forgotten forms of the musical prematter (as for instance the simple drum beating — the obsessive rhythm, how very fresh and revealing nowadays!, or the uncontrolled instrumental "cry").

The force that unifies these elements is the jazz rhythm and sound. It must be said, however, that the sonority and articulation have been here considerably widened.

Komeda's pieces are outlines to be performed by a group of chosen instrumentalists. No wonder that Komeda selects his partners carefully.

Among the musicians connected with him there is RUNE CARLSON, a distinguished Swedish percussionist, extraordinarily musical, with a rapid reflex and an unusual sensitivity to the quality of sound. Though in his style similar to Anthony Williams, in details completely different from him.

Then there is in Komeda's group TOMASZ STANKO, a leading Polish trumpeter, a striking individuality. Since recently he has been playing on the flugelhorn, extracting from it a fine, voluminous sound.

As guest performers appear with Komeda: GUNTER LENZ, playing double-bass with the West-German Albert Mangelsdorff ensemble, a musician of rich technique and imagination; and ZBIGNIEW NAMYSLOWSKI from Warsaw, one of the leading alto axophonists of the younger generation (b. in 1939), known in numerous countries in Europe and in USA.

KRZYSZTOF KOMEDA himself (born on April 27, 1931) is a pianist, a musician whose career has been very rich. He has been playing as jazz musician since 1959, appearing in many European countries and having a particularly great success in Scandinavia. He has written music to over thirty films both Polish and foreign. Among others to "Two Men with a Wardrobe", "Mammalia", "Knife in Water", "Cul-de-sac", all by Polanski, to "Innocent Sorcerers" by Wajda, "Hvad Medos" and „Kattorna" (Cats) by Henig Carlssen. Just from the latter comes the second of the pieces recorded on this disc. of the four individualists appeals strongly to our imagination. And that is what they are aiming at.

© Adam Stawinski (original line notes from the album's back cover)

Krzysztof Komeda-Trzcinski (1931-1969), an extraordinary talented self-taught composer and pianist, became after his tragic, untimely death, a legend and a cult hero of Polish jazz. His music reflects not the growing of jazz in our country in the '60-s, but echoes the big influences: Bill Evan's refinement, Eric Dolphy's free and even John Coltrane's abandon. On this disc his partners are two eminent Polish masters: Tomasz Stanko and Zbigniew Namyslowski and two excellent rhythm men. Gunter Lenz and Rune Carlsson. The title piece "Astigmatic", except for the beginning, presents little of ensemble interaction. Rather, we hear exciting dialogues by trumpet and piano or trumpet and bass. Komeda's piano dictates the levels of tension: it emerges, grows inciting, fades away and emerges again. Namyslowski's alto takes up backed by bass and drums. Lenz's solo opens the way for the drummer and then piano reappears. After a sudden take-off by the whole ensemble the piece burns out in barely audible bass flageolets. "Kattorna" a disquieting music from the Danish movie by Carlssen (the title means Kittens), changes on this disc into real tour de force by Stanko, that reminds us of Mexican deguello from the siege of Alamo time. Komeda's exceptional illustrative talent made him the much valued composer of music to many movies and among them some by R. Polanski. "Svantetic", dedicated to Swedish poet Svante Forster, creates initially an impression of a dirge, but its main diatonic motif in d-minor (a Polish boy scouts song) is merely the nucleus of truly dramatic jazz development in which we hear much of Namyslowski's alto and also beautiful meditations by bass and piano. It seems to be the best piece by Komeda. However, structurally it has double ending: after the first, the drum solo leads to the reappearance of the initial theme that spans the whole, but the last sentence - not without the protest of others - belongs to the trumpet.

© Andrzej Schmidt (courtesy of PowerBros)