We'll Remember Komeda Michal Urbaniak's Fusion feat. Urszula Dudziak

• 1 Choral and Pepetition 09:20
• 2 No Lovesong at All 02:42
• 3 Crazy Girl 07:10
• 4 Oh My Sweet European Home 10:47
• 5 Kattorna 07:52
• 6 Rosemary's Baby 03:31
• Total Runtime 41:22

Info zu We'll Remember Komeda

This album is a remembrance of Polish composer/pianist Krysztof Komeda’s music performed by fellow musicians who knew and loved him. Komeda’s album Astigmatic (1965) was considered a turning point in European jazz; critic Stuart Nicholson stated it “marked a shift away from the dominant American approach with the emergence of a specific European aesthetic.” Yet Komeda is best known for his work in film. He wrote over 70 film scores, including the music for fellow Pole Roman Polanski’s classic films Knife in the Water, Cul de Sac, and Rosemary’s Baby. Five of the players here are jazz legends in their home country of Poland; Michal Urbaniak as well as internationally renowned trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and bassist Roman Dylag worked with Komeda; Urszula Dudziak was the voice in Urbaniak’s famed groups, and Zbigniew Seifert was one of the acknowledged giants of the violin. Choral and Repetition alternates between a dirge-like refrain and frantic modal improvisation, with blistering solos by trumpeter Stanko and Urbaniak on tenor and soprano. Hungarian guitar great Attila Zoller caresses the beautiful ballad No Lovesong at all, whereas Crazy Girl begins in a phantasmagoria of sounds before settling into a swinging beautifully articulated ¾ that descends into a psychic battle between Seifert and Urbaniak. Oh My Sweet European Home consists of a medley of Komeda compositions, with Zoller featured on Canzone For Warschau, Sieverts taking on Witches, Drudziak scatting freely over The Trumpet Player is Innocent, and taking the melody on the hauntingly beautiful Dirge for Europe. Kattorna has a mysterious Mid-Eastern feel with Stanko’s emotive solo, and Urbaniak crying out on tenor sax. Rosemary’s Baby reverberates with a satanic dark angst. A classic album.

„1998 saw the release of this brilliant and moving tribute by the musicians who played with and were influenced by the late Polish composer and pianist Krzysztof Komeda. That these musicians make up the elite of the Poland's jazz scene is plenty notable and a tribute to Komeda's vision and influence. They are trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, violinist and saxophonist Michal Urbaniak and Zbigniew Seifert, bassist Roman Dylag, drummer Peter Giger, vocalist Urszula Dudziak, guitarist Attila Zoller, and percussionist Armen Halburian. The program consists of six of Komeda's compositions arranged by various members of the group, musically directed here by Stanko. Among the most notable tracks are the opener, 'Choral and Repetition,' the 'Crazy Girl' theme from Komeda's score for Roman Polanski's Knife in Water, and the theme from Rosemary's Baby. The opener is where we get the picture of Komeda's influence on three successive generations of jazzmen from Eastern Europe. In Stanko's arrangement, the languid, processional intro is stretched to its limit. Instead of the nearly modal hard bop improvisational section that followed the theme and a quicker tempo, Stanko offers a near-free jazz reading at a breakneck pace. It's breathtaking and a little intimidating, but sublime nonetheless. Also, Zoller's gorgeous 'No Lovesong at All,' played with his own quartet, is a strikingly beautiful and mysterious pastoral read of the original. Where Komeda allowed the melody to suggest harmonic variations that follow it, Zoller inverts the process and the melody flows from the harmonic convergence of his guitar's interplay with the bass and cymbals; remarkable and haunting. In sum, this is a welcome addition to the Komeda library and his legacy that remains, decades after his death, pervasive.“ (Thom Jurek, AMG)

Michal Urbaniak, violin, tenor and Soprano saxophone
Zbigniew Seifert, violin, alto saxophone
Tomasz Stanko, piano, trumpet
Attila Zoller, guitar
Roman Dylag, bass
Peter Giger, drums
Armen Halburian, percussion
Urszula Dudziak, vocals, percussion

Produced by Joachim E. Berendt

Digitally remastered

Michal Urbaniak
Polish violinist, saxophonist and composer Michal Urbaniak played a major role in the development of jazz fusion in the 1970s and 80s. While working in Scandinavia in the 1960’s he met his future wife, Polish singer Urszula Dudziak and formed the foundation of what would later become the group that would stamp its imprint on the jazz world, Michal Urbaniak’s Fusion. Urbaniak moved to New York in 1973. His popularity on the NY scene garnered him a contract with Columbia records and concerts at the Village Vanguard and Carnegie Hall. Blending music from his Polish and European roots with the funk and fusion of the Big Apple impelled American and international jazz musicians to experiment with mixing various ethnic musical forms with jazz.

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