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Komeda Project

Crazy Girl

WM Records WMD 0-358852-1

Dying in his late thirties after composing some of the most memorable and haunting jazz film music ever written ¨ not to mention the classic 1965 recording, Astigmatic featuring Tomasz Stanko and Zbigniew Namyslowski A Krzysztof Komeda is ripe for rediscovery, and this band is dedicated to reinterpreting the music of a man who (in the words of original liner-note writer Adam Slawinski) 'expanded the range of expression in jazz by adding a dramatised lyricism ¨ its force reaching the intensity of ecstatic and mystical experience'.

Of course, this has already been done by Stanko himself with his Litania septet album on ECM, but whereas the great trumpeter accentuated the plangent, woozy melancholy of Komeda's music, the Komeda Project takes a slightly less moody approach, at times achieving an almost jaunty vigour as they rattle through the title track or the irresistibly climactic 'Svantetic'.

On pieces such as 'Ballada' (from Knife in the Water) and 'Tail Peace', however, brooding lyricism is indeed the prevailing atmosphere, and the occasionally Wheeleresque trumpeter Russ Johnson and the affectingly throaty saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna ensure that none of the music's emotional power is dissipated in their absorbing, respectful yet consistently lively and compelling quintet treatments of some of the most under-visited items in the jazz canon. Recommended.