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IMDbPro

Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

  • Composer
  • Music Department
  • Producer
IMDbProStarmeterSee rank
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Jan A. P. Kaczmarek is a composer with a tremendous international reputation that continues to grow. As a successful recording artist and touring musician, Jan turned to composing film scores as his primary occupation. Jan'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, Jan 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 Jan'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. Educated as a lawyer, he abandoned his planned career as a diplomat, for political reasons, to write music in order to finally gain freedom of expression. First he composed for the highly politicized underground theater, and then for a mini-orchestra of his own creation, "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day". The major turning point in his life, he says, was a period of intense study with avant-garde theater director, Jerzy Grotowski. "Playing and composing was like a religion for me," Kaczmarek explains, "and then it became a profession." "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 Jan 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. Jan returned to America in 1989 to find a label for his latest composition for the Orchestra. Jan stayed in the United States where he expanded his horizons by composing for theater as he had already done in Poland with great success, capped by two prestigious New York theater awards in 1992. Having also composed music for films in Poland, he focused his attention to that medium, achieving recognition as a film composer with scores to such films as "Total Eclipse", "Bliss", "Washington Square", "Aimée & Jaguar", "The Third Miracle", "Lost Souls", "Edges of the Lord", "Quo Vadis" and Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful."

February 2005, Jan won his first Oscar for Best Original Score on Marc Forster's highly acclaimed film, "Finding Neverland."

Jan also won The National Review Board's award for Best Score of the Year, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and BAFTA's Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music.In addition to his work in films, Jan is also setting up an Institute inspired by the Sundance Institute, in his home country of Poland, as a European center for development of new work in the areas of film, theatre, music and new media. The Institute website (currently under construction) is: www.rozbitek.org. It is anticipated that Rozbitek will begin accepting students in 2006.
BornApril 29, 1953
  • More at IMDbPro
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    • Agent info
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BornApril 29, 1953
IMDbProStarmeterSee rank
  • View contact info at IMDbPro
  • Won 1 Oscar
    • 7 wins & 12 nominations total

Photos11

Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Yoko Ono accepts Transatlantyk Glocal Hero Award 2013 from Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek conducting at Transatlantyk Festival 2013, Poland
JAN A.P. KACZMAREK AT AIR EDEL STUDIO, RECORDING FINDING NEVERLAND
Beijing International Film Festival 2018, Jury members
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Known for:

Finding Neverland (2004)
Finding Neverland
7.7
  • Composer
  • 2004
Richard Gere and Joan Allen in Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
Hachi: A Dog's Tale
8.1
  • Composer(music by)
  • 2009
Diane Lane in Unfaithful (2002)
Unfaithful
6.7
  • Composer
  • 2002
Richard Jenkins and Danai Gurira in The Visitor (2007)
The Visitor
7.6
  • Composer
  • 2007

Credits

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IMDbPro

Composer

  • Death in Ojai
    • Composer
    • Post-production
    • 2024
  • Van Gogh
    • Composer
    • Pre-production
    • 2024
  • The Happy Worker
    • original cut-scene music composer
    • Post-production
  • Wskrzeszenie (2022)
    Wskrzeszenie
    • Composer (original music by)
    • Short
    • 2022
  • The soul of a piano.
    • Composer
    • 2022
  • Smierc Zygielbojma (2021)
    Smierc Zygielbojma
    • Composer
    • 2021
  • Efekt motylka (2020)
    Efekt motylka
    • Composer (original music by)
    • 2020
  • Mateusz Kosciukiewicz and Dawid Ogrodnik in Magnesium (2020)
    Magnesium
    • Composer
    • 2020
  • John Malkovich, Josh Hartnett, and Bérénice Marlohe in Valley of the Gods (2019)
    Valley of the Gods
    • Composer
    • 2019
  • Stephen Dorff, Connie Nielsen, Stellan Skarsgård, Martha Coolidge, Jacek Braciak, Richard Chew, Marek Dobrowolski, Alexander Gruszynski, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, Adam Levy, Fred Roos, David S. Ward, Marcin Czarnik, Karolina Porcari, Adelaide Clemens, Bozenna Intrator, Ursula Parker, Toby Sebastian, Leo Suter, Sebastian Croft, and Zbigniew John Raczynski in I'll Find You (2019)
    I'll Find You
    • Composer
    • 2019
  • Jim Caviezel and James Faulkner in Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018)
    Paul, Apostle of Christ
    • Composer
    • 2018
  • A Classy Broad (2016)
    A Classy Broad
    • Composer
    • 2016
  • Irène Jacob, Kaori Momoi, Sofía Espinosa, Kristyan Ferrer, Mauricio García Lozano, Paulette Hernandez, and Adriana Llabres in Tales of Mexico (2016)
    Tales of Mexico
    • Composer (music by)
    • 2016
  • Interlude City (2016)
    Interlude City
    • Composer
    • 2016
  • Dancing Before the Enemy: How a Teenage Boy Fooled the Nazis and Lived (2014)
    Dancing Before the Enemy: How a Teenage Boy Fooled the Nazis and Lived
    • Composer
    • 2014
  • Inbetween Worlds (2014)
    Inbetween Worlds
    • Composer
    • 2014
  • Joanna (2013)
    Joanna
    • Composer
    • Short
    • 2013
  • 1939 Battle of Westerplatte (2013)
    1939 Battle of Westerplatte
    • Composer
    • 2013

Music Department

  • Efekt motylka (2020)
    Efekt motylka
    • music producer
    • 2020
  • Pinocchio (2008)
    Pinocchio
    • orchestrations
    • TV Mini Series
    • 2009
  • Bill Murray and Robert Duvall in Get Low (2009)
    Get Low
    • music score producer
    • orchestrator
    • 2009
  • Richard Gere and Joan Allen in Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
    Hachi: A Dog's Tale
    • orchestrator
    • score producer
    • 2009
  • Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Dominik Garcia, Emily Mortimer, Steven Strait, and Ezra Miller in City Island (2009)
    City Island
    • orchestrator
    • score producer
    • 2009
  • Horsemen (2009)
    Horsemen
    • orchestrator
    • 2009
  • Richard Jenkins and Danai Gurira in The Visitor (2007)
    The Visitor
    • score producer
    • 2007
  • Evening (2007)
    Evening
    • orchestrator
    • score producer
    • 2007
  • Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning in Dreamer (2005)
    Dreamer
    • composer: unsued score
    • 2005
  • Finding Neverland (2004)
    Finding Neverland
    • music producer
    • orchestrator
    • 2004
  • Diane Lane in Unfaithful (2002)
    Unfaithful
    • orchestrator
    • 2002
  • Edges of the Lord (2001)
    Edges of the Lord
    • music producer
    • orchestrator
    • 2001
  • Pawel Delag and Magdalena Mielcarz in Quo vadis (2001)
    Quo vadis
    • music producer
    • co-orchestrator
    • 2001
  • Winona Ryder and Ben Chaplin in Lost Souls (2000)
    Lost Souls
    • orchestrator
    • score producer
    • 2000
  • The Third Miracle (1999)
    The Third Miracle
    • music producer
    • orchestrator
    • 1999

Producer

  • The Officer's Wife (2010)
    The Officer's Wife
    • producer
    • 2010
  • Open House
    • executive producer
    • Video
    • 2004

Personal details

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  • Official sites
    • Facebook
    • Official Site
  • Alternative names
    • Jan A. P. Kaczmarek
  • Born
    • April 29, 1953
    • Konin, Wielkopolskie, Poland
  • Spouses
      Aleksandra Twardowska2016 - present
  • Other works
    Cantata for Freedom, (2005) for the orchestra, choir, soprano, and boy soprano

Did you know

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  • Trivia
    Invited to join AMPAS in 2005.

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