Piotr Schmidt International Sextet - Komeda Unknown 1967 (2022) [Hi-Res]

In October 1967 in Baden-Baden, Germany, Krzysztof Komeda recorded the jazz and poetry project Meine Süsse Europäische Heimat – My Sweet European Homeland. It would soon prove Komeda’s final European creation - in a sense, the composer’s farewell to Europe.

The album was released when Komeda was already in Hollywood, working on the score to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Letters between Komeda and the album’s producer Joachim-Ernst Berendt made it clear that more tracks were recorded than were finally released on the album. In one letter, Komeda asked Berendt to swap some tracks. Berendt refused, arguing that certain poems better demonstrated the album’s European character than others. And that was all that remained of the extra tracks…

It seemed that these unknown compositions were lost until, during a meticulous archival research at the National Library in Warsaw, a true treasure was found: the manuscripts of six of Komeda’s compositions from the My Sweet European Homeland project, all six the original cast-offs.

Piotr Schmidt - tp
Kęstutis Vaiginis - ts, ss
David Dorużka - g
Paweł Tomaszewski - p
Harish Raghavan / Michał Barański - b
Jonathan Barber / Sebastian Kuchczyński - dr