Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Film composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek built a career spanning his native Poland, broader European venues, and the United States, where his score for the Peter Pan biopic Finding Neverland earned an Academy Award. Additional Hollywood assignments included Washington Square in 1997 and Hachi: A Dog's Tale in 2009. Although based in Los Angeles, he sustained close ties with Poland by creating concert and operatic pieces and by establishing a film music institute there. Active through the 2020s and the recipient of further major honors, he died in 2024.

Born April 29, 1953, in Konin, Poland, Kaczmarek pursued early musical training yet completed a law degree at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 1977. Those post-graduation years aligned with Poland’s Communist era granting greater cultural autonomy and exposure to Western models. In 1977 he assembled the Orchestra of the Eighth Day; five years later he released the solo album Music for the End on the Flying Fish label. Relocating to Los Angeles in 1989, he first gained recognition in live theater, receiving a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for his 1992 incidental score to John Ford’s 1633 drama ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. His screen debut followed in 1993 with the horror feature Doppelganger. He maintained a parallel presence in Polish cinema, supplying the music for Agnieszka Holland’s Total Eclipse in 1995.

Between 1995 and 2005 he composed nine film scores for both American and Polish productions. One prominent entry was the 2002 thriller Unfaithful, featuring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. Finding Neverland (2004), centered on J.M. Barrie, yielded his most widely recognized score and brought an Academy Award for Best Original Score along with the National Board of Review Award for Best Score of the Year and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music. Later assignments encompassed the 2009 remake Hachi: A Dog’s Tale and the 2018 biblical drama Paul, Apostle of Christ. He also supplied choral works for landmark Polish occasions: Cantata for Freedom in 2005, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Solidarity movement, and Oratorio 1956 in 2006, honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the Poznań uprising. Another major commission, Universa—Open Opera, celebrated the 650th anniversary of Kraków’s Jagiellonian University. In 2023 he received the Lifetime Achievement Polish Film Award. Kaczmarek died of multiple system atrophy on May 21, 2024, in Kraków.