Serious

FREESTAGE, 6.30pm - Before the main concert enjoy original music by tuba player extraordinaire Oren Marshall.  

The first half of the concert features the world premiere screening of the new Brothers Quay short film Maska, which uses the music of renowned Polish classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki, and second half of the concert will be Tomasz Stanko’s quintet playing the music of Komeda who composed the film scores to many seminal films including Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

Maska Dir. Quay Brothers  Music. Krzysztof Penderecki. Based on the short story by Stanislaw Lem.  ‘It’ is created piece by piece, limb by limb, and then with a sudden ‘rush of gender’ takes the shape of an automaton disguised as a beautiful female Duenna sent on a mission into a courtly kingdom to mercilessly track down a prince and kill him. Although she is programmed to kill, she is also capable simultaneously of questioning this programation and it is this friction between the soul and the machine that keeps one suspended between belief and disbelief.

The inspirational trumpeter Tomasz Stanko returns to London following an acclaimed and sold out London Jazz Festival concert, with a new project that combines music and specially created visuals to celebrate a fellow icon of Polish music. Komeda, who died prematurely in 1969, is celebrated as a composer, whose seminal and intensely melodic film scores in both Europe and the USA included landmark Polankski movies.

Stanko brings a hand-picked quintet featuring Adam Pieronczyk (saxophones) Dominik Wania (piano) Slawomir Kurkiewicz (bass) and Olavi Louhivuori (drums).

Mini recital by Krzysztof Komeda Quartet for Polish broadcast and tv.(Krzysztof Komeda piano & Tomasz Stańko trumpet)

Komeda and Stanko were both key figures in the evolution of Polish jazz in the 1960s – a prodigiously talented pianist and composer, Komeda is credited as being a pivotal figure in the shaping of a European aesthetic in jazz composition, whilst Stanko continues to play a central role in today’s European jazz scene, with a string of acclaimed ECM recordings in recent years, including his award-winning 1997 recording of Komeda’s music Litania.  Their landmark 1965 recording together, Astigmatic, is described as “simply essential” by the Penguin CD Guide, and acknowledged as one of the great jazz recordings of its time.

Tomasz Stanko’s concert forms the Centrepiece Gala of the 8th Kinoteka Polish Film Festiwal (4 March – 12 April) www.kinoteka.org.uk   

Clip from the film Knife in the Water