{"id":647,"date":"2018-05-18T12:26:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T10:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?p=647"},"modified":"2020-05-29T01:54:54","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T23:54:54","slug":"pl100-blog-vol-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/","title":{"rendered":"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">In 1960s Los Angeles, three Polish pals were indulging their creativity within the extreme excesses of the West. After spells in France, West Germany and Israel, the cynical non-conformist writer Marek H\u0142asko had just arrived in the U.S., under the assistance of director Roman Pola\u0144ski. Pola\u0144ski was, at this point, still a Hollywood darling, working on his soon-to-be critically-acclaimed horror film&nbsp;<i>Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/i>&nbsp;(1968). The final figure was Krzysztof Komeda, a jazz pianist and composer who was building a steady reputation for scoring independent films, especially through his ongoing collaboration with Pola\u0144ski. The fate of Pola\u0144ski is well-known in the West; the other two, not so much. I\u2019ll return to H\u0142asko in a few months time. Today, I tell the story of modern European jazz\u2019s greatest pioneer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">***<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Last year, I was sat in a packed-out church hall in East London, listening to jazz from under the Iron Curtain. Self-styled \u2018punk jazz\u2019 bassist Wojtek Mazolewski was in full swing with his&nbsp;<span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">Gda\u0144sk-based quintet<\/span><\/span>, giving us a radical sermon in Polish jazz, past and present. Early on in the night, the band played one of Komeda\u2019s early compositions,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N_vUZCaWjYY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">\u2018Kattorna\u2019<\/span><\/a>&nbsp;from the album&nbsp;<i>Astigmatic&nbsp;<\/i>(1966). The song is based on a theme he wrote for a Swedish film of the same name. It has the feel of a film motif, one that eerily threatens to digress into free improvisation at each turn. The free-wheeling flair of the trumpet and piano seemed to be at odds with the common British understanding of artistic censorship in the Eastern Bloc \u2013 it had me hooked.<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The next day, I went to a discussion hosted by&nbsp;<span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">Lanquidity Records<\/span><\/span>. Co-owners Mateusz Surma and Adrian Magrys both collect vinyl and have a vast collection of original Polish jazz records from the Communist era. I won\u2019t bore you with the details of every musician that I discovered that night. I will, however, tell you that the dissonant wails and haphazard melancholia of Tomasz Sta\u0144ko\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fkaMI0llpv4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">\u2018Cry\u2019<\/span><\/a>&nbsp;(<i>Music For K<\/i>, 1970) screamed out at me. Sta\u0144ko was that same trumpeter from&nbsp;<i>Astigmatic<\/i>, and&nbsp;<i>Music For K<\/i>&nbsp;was his dedication to Komeda. If Komeda inspired this sort of emotion in Sta\u0144ko, I wanted to find out what sort of life the pianist lived\u2026<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">***<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Komeda was a child of the swinging Polish interwar period. Born in Pozna\u0144 in 1931, he grew up in an affluent Poland that was rediscovering its cultural identity after regaining independence at the end of World War I. Komeda took piano lessons at a young age, with the intention of becoming a talented musician, This ambition was put on hold following the Nazi invasion of Poland and World War II. The war necessitated moving around the country and Komeda spent his youth between the towns of Cz\u0119stochowa and Ostr\u00f3w Wielkopolski. He continued to study music theory and practise piano during the war and post-war decade. Nonetheless, he felt that his musical education had been interrupted and returned to Pozna\u0144 to study medicine, eventually specialising in ear, nose and throat pathologies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">It was during this time that Komeda\u2019s schoolmate Witold Kujawski introduced him to jazz and took him to jam sessions in Krak\u00f3w. During the 50s, music was still under tight control in communist Poland and jazz musicians held covert \u2018catacomb\u2019 sessions in Kujawski\u2019s tiny Krak\u00f3w flat. The influence of the catacomb era is palpable in Komeda\u2019s early recordings, which are composed in the bebop style of the time. As Komeda began to play more regularly and form his own sextet, his fascination with modern jazz pushed him closer to avant-garde inclinations. It\u2019s no coincidence that this happened in the late 50s, during the cultural thaw that succeeded Stalin\u2019s death. This was a time when the communist Polish state even set up its own record label \u2013&nbsp;<\/span>Polskie Nagrania Muza \u2013 that issued everything from pop to rock and jazz.<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Komeda\u2019s&nbsp;<i>Astigmatic<\/i>&nbsp;(the unique name perhaps a result of his medical background) was the fifth release on Polskie Nagrania Muza\u2019s jazz imprint. It was recorded a few years after Komeda\u2019s domestic success had granted him license to travel and perform overseas, both within the Eastern Bloc and further afield in Scandinavia and the U.S. At this point, Komeda had already scored and starred in Andrzej Wajda\u2019s early classic&nbsp;<i><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">Innocent Sorcerers<\/span><\/i><\/span><i>&nbsp;<\/i>(1960), and his burgeoning relationship with Polanski had led to music credits on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fpSP_a5XdNQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">Knife in the Water<\/span><\/i><\/a>&nbsp;(1962) and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FNtgoViWKgM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">Cul-de-sac<\/span><\/i><\/a>&nbsp;(1966). Within a few years, he would score&nbsp;<i>Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/i>&nbsp;too. That&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7wRNX94fU94\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">haunting lullaby<\/span><\/a>&nbsp;with Mia Farrow\u2019s melancholic singing? All Komeda\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">***<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The abrupt end to Komeda\u2019s life was probably about as hazy for him as it is for us. Various accounts exist, but it\u2019s known that in December 1968, H\u0142asko was hosting a party in LA with Komeda and Pola\u0144ski in attendance. A playful drunken scuffle between Komeda and H\u0142asko led to the latter accidentally pushing the former off a cliff. The young jazz pianist hit his head, went into a coma and died a few months later after being flown back to Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Like many Polish artistic giants \u2013 including H\u0142asko \u2013 Komeda now lies buried at the Pow\u0105zki cemetery in Warsaw\u2019s Wola district. Unlike the crazed colourful cadences of his music, the man\u2019s grave and inscription is conventionally austere. From Sta\u0144ko\u2019s 1970 tribute to contemporary jazz septet EABS\u2019s recent interpretation (<i><span lang=\"UZ-CYR\">Repetitions (Letters To Krzysztof Komeda<\/span><\/i><\/span><i>)<\/i>, 2017), Komeda\u2019s cultural legacy continues to inspire musicians across Poland.<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Nonetheless, his name is relatively unknown outside of film music nerds and Polish jazz fans. British friends who are jazz musicians tend to look across the Atlantic for their inspiration; a Polish guy I spoke to earlier this month lamented the lack of awareness of Komeda (and his contemporaries) among Polish youth. For my money, he\u2019s the best example of Poland\u2019s vibrant 60s culture and would be a household name in the West, had he not died so young. If you don\u2019t know Komeda, the time is ripe to check out his revolutionary music right now.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1960s Los Angeles, three Polish pals were indulging their creativity within the extreme excesses of the West. After spells in France, West Germany and Israel, the cynical non-conformist writer Marek H\u0142asko had just arrived in the U.S., under the assistance of director Roman Pola\u0144ski. Pola\u0144ski was, at this point, still a Hollywood darling, working [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-100-2","category-blogs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>#PL100 BLOG Vol.4 - Instytut Polski w Londynie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pl_PL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4 - Instytut Polski w Londynie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 1960s Los Angeles, three Polish pals were indulging their creativity within the extreme excesses of the West. After spells in France, West Germany and Israel, the cynical non-conformist writer Marek H\u0142asko had just arrived in the U.S., under the assistance of director Roman Pola\u0144ski. Pola\u0144ski was, at this point, still a Hollywood darling, working [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Instytut Polski w Londynie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-05-18T10:26:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-05-28T23:54:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"392\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"ochamanskij\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Napisane przez\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ochamanskij\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Szacowany czas czytania\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minut\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"event\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/\",\"name\":\"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071-300x294.jpg\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\"],\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-05-18T10:26:00+02:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-05-28T23:54:54+02:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/53963c4c768e79692e296cb2619bf9f9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/\"]}],\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"startDate\":\"2018-11-11\",\"endDate\":\"2018-11-11\",\"eventStatus\":\"EventScheduled\",\"eventAttendanceMode\":\"OfflineEventAttendanceMode\",\"location\":{\"@type\":\"place\",\"name\":\"\",\"address\":\"\",\"geo\":{\"@type\":\"GeoCoordinates\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}},\"description\":\"In 1960s Los Angeles, three Polish pals were indulging their creativity within the extreme excesses of the West. After spells in France, West Germany and Israel, the cynical non-conformist writer Marek H\u0142asko had just arrived in the U.S., under the assistance of director Roman Pola\u0144ski. Pola\u0144ski was, at this point, still a Hollywood darling, working on his soon-to-be critically-acclaimed horror film Rosemary\u2019s Baby (1968). The final figure was Krzysztof Komeda, a jazz pianist and composer who was building a steady reputation for scoring independent films, especially through his ongoing collaboration with Pola\u0144ski. The fate of Pola\u0144ski is well-known in the West; the other two, not so much. I\u2019ll return to H\u0142asko in a few months time. Today, I tell the story of modern European jazz\u2019s greatest pioneer.\\n \\n***\\n \\nLast year, I was sat in a packed-out church hall in East London, listening to jazz from under the Iron Curtain. Self-styled \u2018punk jazz\u2019 bassist Wojtek Mazolewski was in full swing with his Gda\u0144sk-based quintet, giving us a radical sermon in Polish jazz, past and present. Early on in the night, the band played one of Komeda\u2019s early compositions, \u2018Kattorna\u2019 from the album Astigmatic (1966). The song is based on a theme he wrote for a Swedish film of the same name. It has the feel of a film motif, one that eerily threatens to digress into free improvisation at each turn. The free-wheeling flair of the trumpet and piano seemed to be at odds with the common British understanding of artistic censorship in the Eastern Bloc \u2013 it had me hooked.\\n \\nThe next day, I went to a discussion hosted by Lanquidity Records. Co-owners Mateusz Surma and Adrian Magrys both collect vinyl and have a vast collection of original Polish jazz records from the Communist era. I won\u2019t bore you with the details of every musician that I discovered that night. I will, however, tell you that the dissonant wails and haphazard melancholia of Tomasz Sta\u0144ko\u2019s \u2018Cry\u2019 (Music For K, 1970) screamed out at me. Sta\u0144ko was that same trumpeter from Astigmatic, and Music For K was his dedication to Komeda. If Komeda inspired this sort of emotion in Sta\u0144ko, I wanted to find out what sort of life the pianist lived\u2026\\n \\n***\\n \\nKomeda was a child of the swinging Polish interwar period. Born in Pozna\u0144 in 1931, he grew up in an affluent Poland that was rediscovering its cultural identity after regaining independence at the end of World War I. Komeda took piano lessons at a young age, with the intention of becoming a talented musician, This ambition was put on hold following the Nazi invasion of Poland and World War II. The war necessitated moving around the country and Komeda spent his youth between the towns of Cz\u0119stochowa and Ostr\u00f3w Wielkopolski. He continued to study music theory and practise piano during the war and post-war decade. Nonetheless, he felt that his musical education had been interrupted and returned to Pozna\u0144 to study medicine, eventually specialising in ear, nose and throat pathologies.\\n \\nIt was during this time that Komeda\u2019s schoolmate Witold Kujawski introduced him to jazz and took him to jam sessions in Krak\u00f3w. During the 50s, music was still under tight control in communist Poland and jazz musicians held covert \u2018catacomb\u2019 sessions in Kujawski\u2019s tiny Krak\u00f3w flat. The influence of the catacomb era is palpable in Komeda\u2019s early recordings, which are composed in the bebop style of the time. As Komeda began to play more regularly and form his own sextet, his fascination with modern jazz pushed him closer to avant-garde inclinations. It\u2019s no coincidence that this happened in the late 50s, during the cultural thaw that succeeded Stalin\u2019s death. This was a time when the communist Polish state even set up its own record label \u2013 Polskie Nagrania Muza \u2013 that issued everything from pop to rock and jazz.\\n \\nKomeda\u2019s Astigmatic (the unique name perhaps a result of his medical background) was the fifth release on Polskie Nagrania Muza\u2019s jazz imprint. It was recorded a few years after Komeda\u2019s domestic success had granted him license to travel and perform overseas, both within the Eastern Bloc and further afield in Scandinavia and the U.S. At this point, Komeda had already scored and starred in Andrzej Wajda\u2019s early classic Innocent Sorcerers (1960), and his burgeoning relationship with Polanski had led to music credits on Knife in the Water (1962) and Cul-de-sac (1966). Within a few years, he would score Rosemary\u2019s Baby too. That haunting lullaby with Mia Farrow\u2019s melancholic singing? All Komeda\u2019s work.\\n \\n \\n***\\n \\nThe abrupt end to Komeda\u2019s life was probably about as hazy for him as it is for us. Various accounts exist, but it\u2019s known that in December 1968, H\u0142asko was hosting a party in LA with Komeda and Pola\u0144ski in attendance. A playful drunken scuffle between Komeda and H\u0142asko led to the latter accidentally pushing the former off a cliff. The young jazz pianist hit his head, went into a coma and died a few months later after being flown back to Poland.\\n \\nLike many Polish artistic giants \u2013 including H\u0142asko \u2013 Komeda now lies buried at the Pow\u0105zki cemetery in Warsaw\u2019s Wola district. Unlike the crazed colourful cadences of his music, the man\u2019s grave and inscription is conventionally austere. From Sta\u0144ko\u2019s 1970 tribute to contemporary jazz septet EABS\u2019s recent interpretation (Repetitions (Letters To Krzysztof Komeda), 2017), Komeda\u2019s cultural legacy continues to inspire musicians across Poland.\\n \\nNonetheless, his name is relatively unknown outside of film music nerds and Polish jazz fans. British friends who are jazz musicians tend to look across the Atlantic for their inspiration; a Polish guy I spoke to earlier this month lamented the lack of awareness of Komeda (and his contemporaries) among Polish youth. For my money, he\u2019s the best example of Poland\u2019s vibrant 60s culture and would be a household name in the West, had he not died so young. If you don\u2019t know Komeda, the time is ripe to check out his revolutionary music right now.\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg\",\"width\":400,\"height\":392},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/\",\"name\":\"Instytut Polski w Londynie\",\"description\":\"Instytuty Polskie\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/53963c4c768e79692e296cb2619bf9f9\",\"name\":\"ochamanskij\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b2ff67cc6eab38d2d3a7c1c5d354ef25?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b2ff67cc6eab38d2d3a7c1c5d354ef25?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"ochamanskij\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/author\/ochamanskij\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4 - Instytut Polski w Londynie","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/","og_locale":"pl_PL","og_type":"article","og_title":"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4 - Instytut Polski w Londynie","og_description":"In 1960s Los Angeles, three Polish pals were indulging their creativity within the extreme excesses of the West. After spells in France, West Germany and Israel, the cynical non-conformist writer Marek H\u0142asko had just arrived in the U.S., under the assistance of director Roman Pola\u0144ski. Pola\u0144ski was, at this point, still a Hollywood darling, working [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/","og_site_name":"Instytut Polski w Londynie","article_published_time":"2018-05-18T10:26:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-05-28T23:54:54+00:00","og_image":[{"width":400,"height":392,"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"ochamanskij","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Napisane przez":"ochamanskij","Szacowany czas czytania":"5 minut"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"event","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/","name":"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#primaryimage"},"image":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071-300x294.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg"],"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg","datePublished":"2018-05-18T10:26:00+02:00","dateModified":"2020-05-28T23:54:54+02:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/53963c4c768e79692e296cb2619bf9f9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"pl-PL","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/"]}],"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","startDate":"2018-11-11","endDate":"2018-11-11","eventStatus":"EventScheduled","eventAttendanceMode":"OfflineEventAttendanceMode","location":{"@type":"place","name":"","address":"","geo":{"@type":"GeoCoordinates","latitude":"","longitude":""}},"description":"In 1960s Los Angeles, three Polish pals were indulging their creativity within the extreme excesses of the West. After spells in France, West Germany and Israel, the cynical non-conformist writer Marek H\u0142asko had just arrived in the U.S., under the assistance of director Roman Pola\u0144ski. Pola\u0144ski was, at this point, still a Hollywood darling, working on his soon-to-be critically-acclaimed horror film Rosemary\u2019s Baby (1968). The final figure was Krzysztof Komeda, a jazz pianist and composer who was building a steady reputation for scoring independent films, especially through his ongoing collaboration with Pola\u0144ski. The fate of Pola\u0144ski is well-known in the West; the other two, not so much. I\u2019ll return to H\u0142asko in a few months time. Today, I tell the story of modern European jazz\u2019s greatest pioneer.\n \n***\n \nLast year, I was sat in a packed-out church hall in East London, listening to jazz from under the Iron Curtain. Self-styled \u2018punk jazz\u2019 bassist Wojtek Mazolewski was in full swing with his Gda\u0144sk-based quintet, giving us a radical sermon in Polish jazz, past and present. Early on in the night, the band played one of Komeda\u2019s early compositions, \u2018Kattorna\u2019 from the album Astigmatic (1966). The song is based on a theme he wrote for a Swedish film of the same name. It has the feel of a film motif, one that eerily threatens to digress into free improvisation at each turn. The free-wheeling flair of the trumpet and piano seemed to be at odds with the common British understanding of artistic censorship in the Eastern Bloc \u2013 it had me hooked.\n \nThe next day, I went to a discussion hosted by Lanquidity Records. Co-owners Mateusz Surma and Adrian Magrys both collect vinyl and have a vast collection of original Polish jazz records from the Communist era. I won\u2019t bore you with the details of every musician that I discovered that night. I will, however, tell you that the dissonant wails and haphazard melancholia of Tomasz Sta\u0144ko\u2019s \u2018Cry\u2019 (Music For K, 1970) screamed out at me. Sta\u0144ko was that same trumpeter from Astigmatic, and Music For K was his dedication to Komeda. If Komeda inspired this sort of emotion in Sta\u0144ko, I wanted to find out what sort of life the pianist lived\u2026\n \n***\n \nKomeda was a child of the swinging Polish interwar period. Born in Pozna\u0144 in 1931, he grew up in an affluent Poland that was rediscovering its cultural identity after regaining independence at the end of World War I. Komeda took piano lessons at a young age, with the intention of becoming a talented musician, This ambition was put on hold following the Nazi invasion of Poland and World War II. The war necessitated moving around the country and Komeda spent his youth between the towns of Cz\u0119stochowa and Ostr\u00f3w Wielkopolski. He continued to study music theory and practise piano during the war and post-war decade. Nonetheless, he felt that his musical education had been interrupted and returned to Pozna\u0144 to study medicine, eventually specialising in ear, nose and throat pathologies.\n \nIt was during this time that Komeda\u2019s schoolmate Witold Kujawski introduced him to jazz and took him to jam sessions in Krak\u00f3w. During the 50s, music was still under tight control in communist Poland and jazz musicians held covert \u2018catacomb\u2019 sessions in Kujawski\u2019s tiny Krak\u00f3w flat. The influence of the catacomb era is palpable in Komeda\u2019s early recordings, which are composed in the bebop style of the time. As Komeda began to play more regularly and form his own sextet, his fascination with modern jazz pushed him closer to avant-garde inclinations. It\u2019s no coincidence that this happened in the late 50s, during the cultural thaw that succeeded Stalin\u2019s death. This was a time when the communist Polish state even set up its own record label \u2013 Polskie Nagrania Muza \u2013 that issued everything from pop to rock and jazz.\n \nKomeda\u2019s Astigmatic (the unique name perhaps a result of his medical background) was the fifth release on Polskie Nagrania Muza\u2019s jazz imprint. It was recorded a few years after Komeda\u2019s domestic success had granted him license to travel and perform overseas, both within the Eastern Bloc and further afield in Scandinavia and the U.S. At this point, Komeda had already scored and starred in Andrzej Wajda\u2019s early classic Innocent Sorcerers (1960), and his burgeoning relationship with Polanski had led to music credits on Knife in the Water (1962) and Cul-de-sac (1966). Within a few years, he would score Rosemary\u2019s Baby too. That haunting lullaby with Mia Farrow\u2019s melancholic singing? All Komeda\u2019s work.\n \n \n***\n \nThe abrupt end to Komeda\u2019s life was probably about as hazy for him as it is for us. Various accounts exist, but it\u2019s known that in December 1968, H\u0142asko was hosting a party in LA with Komeda and Pola\u0144ski in attendance. A playful drunken scuffle between Komeda and H\u0142asko led to the latter accidentally pushing the former off a cliff. The young jazz pianist hit his head, went into a coma and died a few months later after being flown back to Poland.\n \nLike many Polish artistic giants \u2013 including H\u0142asko \u2013 Komeda now lies buried at the Pow\u0105zki cemetery in Warsaw\u2019s Wola district. Unlike the crazed colourful cadences of his music, the man\u2019s grave and inscription is conventionally austere. From Sta\u0144ko\u2019s 1970 tribute to contemporary jazz septet EABS\u2019s recent interpretation (Repetitions (Letters To Krzysztof Komeda), 2017), Komeda\u2019s cultural legacy continues to inspire musicians across Poland.\n \nNonetheless, his name is relatively unknown outside of film music nerds and Polish jazz fans. British friends who are jazz musicians tend to look across the Atlantic for their inspiration; a Polish guy I spoke to earlier this month lamented the lack of awareness of Komeda (and his contemporaries) among Polish youth. For my money, he\u2019s the best example of Poland\u2019s vibrant 60s culture and would be a household name in the West, had he not died so young. If you don\u2019t know Komeda, the time is ripe to check out his revolutionary music right now."},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2020\/01\/csm_R-9768684-1486054326-4697.jpeg_4b13c25071.jpg","width":400,"height":392},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2018\/05\/18\/pl100-blog-vol-4\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"#PL100 BLOG Vol.4"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/","name":"Instytut Polski w Londynie","description":"Instytuty Polskie","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"pl-PL"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/53963c4c768e79692e296cb2619bf9f9","name":"ochamanskij","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b2ff67cc6eab38d2d3a7c1c5d354ef25?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b2ff67cc6eab38d2d3a7c1c5d354ef25?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"ochamanskij"},"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/author\/ochamanskij\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}