Martin Kratochvil and Jazz Q Praha (Prague)at Revue Stage on Granville Island,
1601 Johnston Street, V6H 3R9, Vancouver, BC.

Martin Kratochvil became well known to audiences throughout Eastern Europe in the 1970’s, when he brought jazz-rock and live electronic performance to this part of the world with his legendary group Jazz Q Praha, which between 1970 and 1984 recorded dozen albums and won prizes at several international festivals, including San Sebastian and Zurich. Before this time, Kratochvil had managed to earn a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Prague’s Charles University, travel in England for a year, and pursue his interest in jazz, competitive skiing and mountain climbing. In 1976 he became the first Czech musician to be invited (and allowed) to spend a year at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he studied with Gary Burton and Mike Gibbs. Upon his return from the U.S. in 1977, Kratochvil continued working with Jazz Q , and also founded Studio Budikov, the first privately-owned recording studio in Communist Czechoslovakia. This entrepreneurial spirit ripened in the forming of the Bonton Music Cooperative (still under the Communist regime), which then, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, went on to become the largest entertainment conglomerate in the former East Bloc. As CEO of Bonton Music Company, Martin is known outside the Czech Republic as the model of the new Czech entrepreneur. He continues with his passion for climbing, travelling twice a year to the Himalayas on ever more remote treks, and has in the past few years added to his range of careers by making several best-selling films about the Himalayas, and most recently has filmed the ground-breaking serial “Prolinani svetu” aired throughout this year on Czech TV. He is most at home behind the piano keyboard, where he has developed a style that can remind you of Keith Jarrett, Thelonius Monk or John Cage, depending on the piece of the moment; he combines a hard percussive attack and rhythmic drive with gentle and lush harmonies, and when the musical tension mounts he is not afraid to strike or pluck the piano strings with any object at hand.

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