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Komeda Project

Requiem

WM Records WMD0-358852-2

Although they have retained trumpeter Russ Johnson from their previous (Krzysztof) Komeda Project album (2006's Crazy Girl), pianist/arranger/composer Andrzej Winnicki and saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna have opted for what they term the 'sound of surprise' from a new rhythm section, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Nasheet Waits, on this second collection of pieces by the great Polish composer/pianist.

Neither Colley nor Waits was apparently familiar with the music prior to recording, so there is indeed a freshness and spontaneity to their reaction to it; Waits's springy New Orleans parade-type tattoo on 'Dirge for Europe', for instance, tellingly contrasts with Olavi Louhivuori's more discursive approach on Tomasz Stanko's recent version of the same piece.

The album begins with the three-part Coltrane threnody, 'Night-time, Daytime Requiem', and contains a lengthy visit to Komeda's multi-hued classic 'Astigmatic', so there is a fair amount of sophisticated complexity in this music, but the melancholy beauty, the haunting moodiness of the late composer's work (qualities that made him so effective as a musical collaborator with film director Roman Polanski) are also faithfully evoked in the five pieces by him on Requiem.

The three main soloists are all highly accomplished, Medyna's unpredictable eloquence, Winnicki's subtle power and Johnson's resourcefulness and lyricism (he's rightly called 'a poet of the trumpet' by Medyna) bringing thoughtfulness and conviction not only to the aforementioned Komeda material, but also to the broken rhythms of 'Elutka' and the Coltrane-inspired modal piece 'Anubis', both by Winnicki. This is absorbing, affecting music, addressed with intelligence and passion, and provides yet more evidence of just how serious a blow to the jazz world was Komeda's premature death at 37, in 1969.