Programme

One of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time, ten out of ten music fans would probably agree. A player with astonishing technique, but also a pioneer of certain kinds of jazz fusion, as well as a great maestro of classical playing styles. All this is Al Di Meola, who will be one of the biggest stars of this year’s JazzFestBrno.

 

In the early 1970s, he attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee and by 1974 had joined the seminal band of his life, Corea’s Return To Forever. He recorded three albums with them, Where Have I Known You Before (1974), No Mystery (1975) and Romantic Warrior (1976), and released his first solo album, Land of the Midnight Sun, the same year his involvement with this seminal fusion group ended.

Al Di Meola is significant both for his phenomenal playing technique on both electric and acoustic guitar, and for his compositional style, in which he managed to uniquely combine the essence of jazz with the musical elements of the Mediterranean and Latin America to create a completely unique musical language – in this sense, he accomplished a similar feat in guitar jazz as Carlos Santana did in guitar rock, and it is no coincidence that the two colleagues toured together in 1980.

Throughout most of his career, Al Di Meola has been a very productive and active musician, with around three dozen solo albums alone, including very famous titles such as the multi-part World Sinfonia. However, the recordings in which Di Meola partners other colleagues are also very substantial and popular. Clearly the most frequently cited album of this rank is Friday Night in San Francisco (1980), which featured Al Di Meola’s breathtaking acoustic trio with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, and produced arguably the most famous acoustic guitar recording of all time. Other musicians with whom Di Meola formed equal partnerships included guitarists Larry Coryell and Biréli Lagréne, bassist Stanley Clarke, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, pianist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, and Czech-born keyboardist and composer Jan Hammer, with whom Di Meola worked on incorporating electronics into jazz music.

As the title of the concert at JazzFestBrno suggests, the newly seventy-year-old Al Di Meola will mainly recall the part of his career when his domain was the electric guitar, when he was one of the world’s leading exponents of fusion and enriched it with his own unforgettable contribution.

Line-up:

Al Di Meola – guitar, Dave Lowrey – electric bass, Philippe Saisse – keyboards, Richie Morales – drums, Gumbi Ortiz – percussion

The masters belong to the masters. And when such people come together on the basis of the celebration of the centenary of the founding of Czech Radio Brno, it makes sense, of course. The connection is clear thanks to the presence of the most important Moravian big band, which has collaborated with many world stars during its more than 80-year tradition, in the Brno radio studio.

 

Saxophonist and composer Gustav Brom founded the orchestra in 1940 and managed it until his death in 1995, when Vladimír Valovič took over the baton. Brom’s big band was exceptional on the domestic scene in several aspects. His bandleader had a very good taste for musicians, so his ranks included many extremely good and talented musicians, able to adapt to many genres with efficiency and inventiveness. And this is another exceptional feature of the orchestra. The general public knew the orchestra as a backing ensemble for pop singers and from the environment of the former so-called dance music – but even in this explicitly popular rank it never slipped into low-quality or even kitsch positions. Jazz fans knew the big band as a top jazz ensemble that encompassed many jazz sub-genres from swing to avant-garde movements in its original and adopted repertoire, and in the field of the so-called third stream, combining elements of jazz and contemporary classical music, “The Brom’s” were among the world’s top.

Over the years, many singers and instrumentalists have guested with the orchestra, among the best known are trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Maynard Ferguson and singer Diana Ross. This lineage now continues in the form of guest appearances by Randy Brecker. He has been one of America’s trumpet greats since the 1960s. He began his professional career in the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, was a member of Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers, toured with Stevie Wonder, among others, before forming the Brecker Brothers in 1975 with his brother, the phenomenal saxophonist Michael. The two siblings then worked together continuously until Michael’s early death in 2007. Randy Brecker recorded some thirty albums as a solo artist, but many times more with the sound of his trumpet as a guest. And because he never committed himself to only one genre, his name can be found outside the jazz context on albums by Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Joe Cocker, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr, to name a few.

Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, ragtime, Lemonade Joe and polka not only in syncopation. The multi-talented jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Jiří Slavík brings back the boldness and humour of dance to polka.

 

From its rural origins, the polka became the rebellious rebellion of European bourgeois youth, a fashionable dance hit in Paris, the music of cowboys in Latin America, a mainstream American pop music, and even a Grammy category award for best polka between 1986 and 2009. It can be said, in an exaggerated way, that wherever the Czech entered, polka music began to be played.

However, in the works of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček, as well as in the compositions of many world composers, the piano polka has largely been transformed into a salon art. “In some arrangements by Czech greats, the polka has changed so much that sometimes its original purpose – dance – has completely disappeared,” said Jiří Slavík, explaining why he and Polka-boys decided to return the polka to its dance character and straightforward boldness. With humour, exaggeration, simplicity, but virtuosically and in syncopation as in ragtime or as the composers Jan Rychlík and Vlastimil Hala did in the legendary film Lemonade Joe.

“From my point of view, polka must have played an important role in the creation of ragtime. The first black pianists had to learn to play something with the very atypical and almost un-pianoesque left hand that we hear in polka. Just change the phrasing of the right hand a little, add a little swing and ragtime is not far away. And it’s certainly no coincidence that polkas were also written by Jaroslav Ježek, who was otherwise mostly considered a jazz musician drawing inspiration mainly from American music,” says Jiří Slavík, adding to the concept of his project: “I have borrowed themes from the fields of famous Czech composers, but I am transforming them, decorating them and, as the tradition of jazz musicianship dictates, improvising on them.”

Let’s not doubt that Jiří Slavík’s new project will once again produce something extraordinary. The composer, double bassist and, in this case, accordionist will be joined by all the big names of our jazz and classical scene: Cyrille Oswald (flutes and tenor saxophone), Michal Wróblewski (clarinet and alto saxophone), Marcel Bárta (bass clarinet and tenor saxophone), Štěpán Blinka (violin), Milan Kárník Jakeš (viola), Jan Keller (cello), Taras Voloschuk (double bass) and Jakub Tengler (drums and percussion).

Line-up:

Cyrille Oswald – flétny a tenor saxofon, Michal Wróblewski – klarinet a alt saxofon, Marcel Bárta – basklarinet a tenor saxofon

Štěpán Blinka – housle, Milan Kárník Jakeš – viola, Jan Keller – violoncello, Taras Voloschuk – kontrabas, Jakub Tengler – bicí a melodické perkuse, Jiří Slavík – klavír a akordeon

He is said to be a jazz musician for the hip hop generation. There’s a lot of truth to that, but not all of it. He blurs the lines between traditional and modern jazz, hip hop, soul, funk, pop and rock so perfectly that his style can be thought of as black music history in a nutshell. He is brilliant at everything he does: as a singer, as a guitarist, and as a songwriter and producer. A consummate professional.

 

In addition to the talent that was given to José James in his Irish-Panamanian heritage, he is also a highly accomplished musician, a graduate of The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, located in New York’s legendary Greenwich Village neighbourhood, where the music life has been beating for more than half a century. Though he made his independent debut in 2008, he had already captivated listeners and critics alike with his album Dreamer, and it’s no surprise that his slow journey led him to two of the coveted publishing ports of call for all jazz musicians everywhere, first to the Impulse! and then Blue Note, for whom he recorded five albums before setting up his own label, Rainbow Blonde, with his wife, the well-known singer Taali.

José James is truly a genre-straddling artist to the max. Like few others, he is able to combine nimble hip-hop rhythms and jazz harmonies into a completely natural whole. The musical legacy of his predecessors, or rather female-predecessors, is a testament to his range, as he finds them extremely inspiring and enjoys exploring their music. In 2015 he released Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday, an album on which he covers songs from the repertoire of one of the greatest jazz singers of the twentieth century. And his most recent album to date, last year’s On & On, is again a tribute to singer-songwriter Erykah Badu. “For my generation, Erykah Badu was one of the most innovative and insightful songwriters. Her work has proven to be groundbreaking in a social, musical and artistic sense,” says José James.

After all, he has also collaborated with an absolutely wide range of musicians in the past, whether it was the deceased pianist and modern jazz classic McCoy Tyner, or contemporary progressives Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper or Erik Truffaz.

José James is simply exactly what any even slightly non-dogmatic listener would like all musicians to be: multi-talented, capable not only of playing and singing anything, but also of putting in a big chunk of his own unmistakable feeling.

Line-up:

José James – voice, Jharis Yokley – drums, Yves Fernandez – bass, O’Mitchell Henry – keys

He loves and hates his instrument at the same time. “They’re just cold metal bars,” says Joel Ross of the vibraphone. And he adds that it’s hard to get any expression out of them. But that’s the challenge for him, the fuel for everything he does. And he’s damn good at it.

 

Perhaps Joel Ross should have been a bluesman, since he was born in 1995 on Chicago’s South Side, a former black ghetto that has been the place for which electric blues is most typical since the 1940s. His father was what was known in our milieu in centuries past as a regenschori, in the local church, the leader of the choir and its accompanying band. In it, along with his twin brother Josh, Joel had been playing drums since the age of three, and the gospel rhythm that is so central to all black music as far as the memory can see got deep under his skin. But alongside that, modern jazz from family-owned recordings came to him at a very early age. In addition to geniuses of the calibre of Davis, Monk and Coltrane, Milt Jackson, undoubtedly the most important vibraphonist of the fifties and sixties, a member of the famous Modern Jazz Quartet and a close collaborator of all three of the above and many, many others, did not escape his radar. An ideal idol for a young boy who, at ten, actually by sheer coincidence in the school band, moved from the drums (which were taken over by his brother) to the xylophone, the wooden predecessor of the vibraphone.
Ross’s serious immersion in jazz music began at an arts-oriented high school that had a partnership with the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the organization that organizes the famed Chicago Jazz Festival – and that shortcut brought Joel Ross into close proximity to both living classics like Herbie Hancock and younger artists like Gerald Clayton and Robert Glasper. And during further studies, this time at the Brubeck Institute in California, he was mentored by the excellent vibraphonist Stefon Harris.
Ross’s reputation has begun to spread through the jazz landscape, and this has allowed him to enter 2019 recording his debut album with a real swagger, namely with the prestigious Blue Note label at his back. The album KingMaker has been followed by three more, including this year’s nublues, hinting at what character Ross’s own compositions and a few reworked standards are likely to have. Well, we did get to the blues after all…

The Robert Balzar Trio has been talked about for many years as one of the finest home jazz bands. This is despite the fact that the only member who runs through its entire history is the one who gave the trio its name. While the Robert Balzar Trio’s music has certainly changed over time, depending on its members, the foundation around which everything revolves remains the same.

 

Double bassist and bassist Robert Balzar, a very prominent follower of the so-called Czech double bass school, has been on the Czech music scene since the second half of the 1980s. He has never been a strict and dogmatic follower of one musical style. He has accompanied pop singers, formed the backbone of chansonnier Hana Hegerova’s backing band for over twenty years, has been a member of the funk band J.A.R. since 1998 and co-founded the great fusion project Illustratosphere with Dan Bárta in 2000.

For Robert Balzar, however, jazz is the most intimate genre in which he devotes himself. Throughout his career he has had the honour of backing such luminaries as Kurt Elling, John Abercrombie, Raul Midon, Benny Golson, Arturo Sandoval and others. He founded the Robert Balzar Trio in 1996, toured halfway around the world with it (USA, UK, Turkey, Sweden, Hungary, Cyprus, Israel, etc.) and recorded nine albums. The last one was released at the very end of last year under the title Conversation. Most of the trio’s repertoire consists of their own compositions or arrangements of not only jazz standards. The trio’s side project is devoted to these, working in collaboration with Dan Bárta, who reveals his improvisational and jazz skills even more than in Illustratosphere.

In addition to the bandleader, the current members of the Robert Balzar Trio are pianist Vít Křišt’an and drummer Kamil Slezák, both extremely experienced musicians with extensive international musical training and a large portfolio of contemporary musical engagements.

Line-up:

Vít Křišťan – piano, Robert Balzar – double bass, Kamil Slezák – drums

The scope of pianist and composer Matej Benek’s work is extremely broad, not only in the field of jazz. Even in his quintet, he has gathered musicians who like to cross borders, but basically belong to the top of domestic jazz.

 

Now forty-four years old, the musician originally from Slovakia has put down roots in Prague for a long time, and his first major work that made him known in a big way was the thematic song album Planety in 2015, which featured guest appearances by such stars as Richard Müller, Dan Bárta and Michael Kocáb. Matej Benko has collaborated as a studio or concert musician with such disparate greats as the band Mig 21 or the singer-songwriter Xavier Baumaxa, but he has also been a regular participant in the projects of the lyricist and producer Michal Horáček and some of the singers whose repertoire he co-created. A very well-received borderline project, albeit mostly falling into the jazz category, was the collaboration of the Matej Benko Quintet with singer Ondřej Ruml, in which they gave an up-to-date jazz face to the songs of Jaroslav Ježek, Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich through album recordings and concerts.

Line-up:

Miroslav Hloucal –  trumpet, flugelhorn, Radek Zapadlo – saxophone, Matej Benko – piano, Rastislav Uhrík – double bass, bass guitar, Pavel Zbořil – drums

One of the most iconic personalities of the contemporary jazz scene, personifying its variability and interconnectedness with other genres, proving that if there is one thing current jazz is not, it is an unexciting soundtrack to the coffee of aunts sitting on spa colonnades.

Kamasi Washington routinely performs not only at jazz festivals, but also at gigantic multi-genre events that predict the direction of musical events, such as Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, England’s Glastonbury or America’s Coachella. He fits the bill perfectly, with his always visually stocky physique and even more robust tenor saxophone tone, leading a brilliantly orchestrated pack of musicians reminiscent of a street gang.

Kamasi Washington’s music is unclassifiable; on the one hand, he plays bold and nimble improvisations with a funk edge that could be easily played by Sly And The Family Stone or Miles Davis in their respective eras; on the other hand, he is literally a musical architect who has made use of a massive orchestral sound as well as techniques reminiscent of psychedelic music on his conceptual, mostly three-hour-long album projects The Epic (2015) and Heaven and Earth (2018).

Anyway, Kamasi Washington’s musical roots are basically jazz, but before he literally kicked down the door to the major leagues of the genre, he played with musicians more in the hip hop and electronica realm – he was already friends with progressive black music personality Thundercat during his studies, he has since recorded with the rapper Snoop Dogg and producer Flying Lotus, and the first truly “big album” on which we could notice  his name was Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). On the edge of jazz and other subgenres of black music is the “supergroup” Dinner Party, which he formed in 2020 with keyboardist Robert Glasper, multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin and DJ and producer 9th Wonder.

In May this year, Kamasi Washington’s new album Fearless Movement will be released, featuring, among others, the famous rapper André 3000 and the godfather of funk, the eighty-two-year-old George Clinton. Before the release, Washington let the world know that it would be a dance album, which scared some listeners. “When I say dance, I don’t mean it literally. To me, dance is something that expresses the movement of the human spirit, so it’s actually kind of music. And that’s what I’m going for on the album,” the saxophonist put his statement into perspective.

The album was marked by two things – the fact that some of its material was written during the covid pandemic and the protagonist, in his own words, became aware of his own mortality, and on the other hand, the joyous fact that he became a father to a daughter at the same time. At her age of two he was already playing her his favourite masters, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Erik Dolphy. “I wanted to show her the best music,” he says. He adds that he then sat down at the piano with his daughter and based on a motif she kept strumming over and over again, Asha The First was created for the album.

In Kamasi Washington comes to JazzFestBrno another of the key and highly topical personalities who are now and therefore writing the history of jazz and in a few decades they will be the main chapters of every, even the most superficial study of music historians.