Polish composer and musicologist, Andrzej Trzaskowski was born 23 March 1933 and died 16 September 1998. He composed and/or directed the music for thirty films between 1959 and 1990. Trzaskowski, a Krakow native, learned how to play the piano when he was eighteen. He helped form Melomani in 1951, one of the first Polish swing/bop groups. He studied musicology at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University and took private lessons in composition, contemporary music theory, and was an active participant at the experimental studio for Polish radio. He recorded and played with the Jazz Believers in 1958, which featured Wojciech Karolak, Jan Ptaszyn Wroblewski and other musicians. He formed the Wreckers hard-bop group the following year, which he took on the United States tour in 1962. He was the leader of small groups and performed with American musicians who were visiting Poland in 1960, Stan Getz, and Ted Curson, 1965-1966. His groups were a part of the early stages of many prominent Polish musicians like Zbigniew Namyslowski and Tomasz Stanko. Trzaskowski started to use avant-garde techniques in 1964. He worked in West Germany in the 1960s for Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg, where he wrote more than 20 compositions. He led an orchestra that broadcast on Polish television and radio from 1975 to 1995. He was a well-known pianist but decided to focus more on composition in the 1970s. Don Ellis performed Nihil novi at the 1962 International Jazz Jamboree. After that, he wrote music for two jazz ballets, as well as for many theater pieces and films. He was also one the many musical stars who made a cameo in Andrzej Walda’s 1960 film Niewinni czarodzieje. From Wikipedia
