Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Polish Cinema In Australia is proud to present a one-off musical concert in Melbourne in honour of Polands influential pianist and renowned film score composer, Krzysztof Komeda, to be performed by Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble, featuring revered pianist and music educator, Australias first godfather of jazz, Tony Gould.

Perhaps best known for his film compositions, Komeda wrote the scores for Roman Polanskis films Knife in the Water (1962), Cul-de-sac (1966), The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), and Rosemarys Baby (1968). Komeda's album Astigmatic (1965) is widely regarded as one of the most important European jazz albums; British critic Stuart Nicholson describes the album as "marking a shift away from the dominant American approach with the emergence of a specific European aesthetic.

Tony Gould is widely known as Australias first godfather of jazz, with an illustrious career that spans over 50 years.

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and educator Adam Simmons has been involved across many different scenes within Melbourne and internationally, performing jazz, punk, new music, traditional Japanese honkyo-ku, funk and free noise/improv.  

Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble first performed in 2004 at the Sydney Opera House for the Freedman Awards (which resulted in a Special Award from the Freedman Foundation for Adam). Since then the group has performed at Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival, recorded by ABC FM at the Half Bent Music Festival, Festival Of Slow Music, Wentworth Arts Festival and for Adams two year concert series, The Usefulness of Art which received rave reviews. The aim is to bring together musicians of diverse backgrounds to make music that is meaningful and communicative regardless of genre.

Featured non-Australian music: Komeda

Featured artists

• Jazz/improvisation by Tony Gould
• Jazz/improvisation by Adam Simmons