Born: April 29, 1953, Konin, Poland
Summary. Jan Kaczmarek was evidently moved when receiving the Oscar statuette: "I cannot tell you how happy I am, and thank you Academy. 'Finding Neverland' was a great adventure and I'm so proud to be part of it. Mark Foster, he should be here. Mark, thank you for your subtle mind, for your incredible talent."
Excerpts from the reviews in IMdB:
Stavros Georgiades "Guitar player" (Kakopetria, CYPRUS) -
The most beautiful soundtrack music I heard in a while. Another masterpiece from the accomplished Polish composer.
Beautiful!!!, Wes Lyons.
Never really heard of the composer but he has composed some beautiful music! Finding Neverland is a very magical score, and is a treat to listen to! It has almost everything in it from... powerful piano solos, to peaceful, serene cues from a live orchestra, great vocal talents by the boy's choir, and even a "waltzy" (is that a word?) Italian feel to it! Overall, great classic music.... and it will like many other soundtracks be included on my "Favorites" list!
An Entrancing Soundtrack, r:Luv0817 "Brilliant" (London, UK) -
Ohmigosh, I'm listening to this soundtrack right at this very moment. As I type this out, my tears are welling up because of the melodic "Neverland" track. When I saw this film in the theatres one of the first things I noticed was the score. I LOVE film and it's just something you learn to look for, an awesome score, and this is it. It's absolutely beautiful, it's beyond beautiful, it's brilliant.
Soundtrack P. McCord "pgm" (Irvine, CA USA
I love the music on this CD. As it's all from the same composer, a lot of it sounds similar, but the music is beautiful so I don't mind that. It's my new favorite CD.
love it!, K. M. Lewis "star lover" (Chico, CA USA)
Great soundtrack. I like to put this on while I do work, very relaxing.
Early days. Kaczmarek is a graduate of law studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Educated as a lawyer, he abandoned this career. That major turning point in his life, he said, was a period of intense workshops with avant-garde theatre director Jerzy Grotowski.
Professional career. Following his need for freedom of expression, Kaczmarek was composing first for the highly politicized underground, the Eight Day Theatre, and then for a mini-orchestra of his own creation, The Orchestra of the Eighth Day. "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day" began touring Europe in the late 1970's and to date, has completed eighteen major tours. They appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the VPRO Radio International Contemporary Music Festival in Amsterdam,the Venice Biennale, and the International Music Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, where Kaczmarek won the Golden Spring Prize for the Best Composition. He is a five-time winner in Jazz Forum's Jazz Top Poll. At the end of the Orchestra's first American tour in 1982, Kaczmarek recorded his debut album, Music for the End, for the Chicago-based major independent Flying Fish Records.
He authored music to over thirty feature films and documentaries. In 1989 he moved to Los Angeles, USA. Kaczmarek's first success in the United States came in theater. After composing striking scores for productions at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, he won an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for his music for the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1992 production of John Ford's "Tis Pity She's A Whore," directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, starring Val Kilmer and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Newsday wrote that Kaczmarek's score "undulates with hypnotic force that gets under your skin," while Frank Rich of the New York Times found it worthy of the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and Luchino Visconti. After gaining more experience in composing for the big screen by doing music for a few horror movies, he got his first opportunity to work on a big budget film in 1995. The movie was Total Eclipse directed by Polish director Agnieszka Holland and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. After that, he collaborated with Holland on a number of projects that made his name more and more recognized in Hollywood and led to more jobs in big budget productions. Before scoring the music for Finding Neverland, he composed the music for the 2002 relation drama Unfaithful starring Richard Gere. As in several of his other works, solo piano performances are frequent in the Finding Neverland soundtrack (performed by the Polish pianist Leszek Mozdzer). Together with strings, woodwinds and boys-choirs, he has built up a musical texture which both expresses the magic of fairytales and the suffering from tensions in relationships. In interviews, Kaczmarek has expressed that this combination of two major themes in Finding Neverland was the big challenge in the composition process. Having also composed music for films in Poland, he focused his attention to that medium with scores to such films as "Bliss", "Washington Square", "Aimée & Jaguar", "The Third Miracle", "Lost Souls", "Edges of the Lord" and "Quo Vadis". In 2005 Jan Kaczmarek received an Oscar for the music (score) in Finding Neverland, directed by Marc Forster.
In addition to his work in films, Kaczmarek was commissioned to write two symphonic and choral pieces for two important national occasions in Poland. “Cantata for Freedom” (2005) to celebrate 25th anniversary of Solidarity movement, and oratorio “1956” (2006) to commemorate 50th anniversary of bloody uprising against totalitarian government in Poznan, Poland. Both were broadcast live on national television.
Sources:
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Jan Kaczmarek" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
Wikipedia
Jan Kaczmarek's homepage (with some of his music)
Insight Central Europe
Amazon reviews
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