featuring Jodi Proznick, one of Canada’s finest jazz artists.

“When I close my eyes, I see a little girl running around the tables in the Jewish Centre in Prague, avidly helping the curly-haired waitress to serve lunches. Old ladies and gentlemen seated around smile at her and give her a caress occasionally. Above the entrance to the dining hall there is a portrait of Barbra Streisand, who, in 1983, shot the movie Yentl in Prague; the little girl was one of the children extra on the set. At home, the kitchen smells of mom’s delicious pancakes and there is the little girl`s father sitting with a banjo on his knees, surrounded by other musicians. The child sings and dances around them, as if already sensing that singing will be her life calling...”

The Norman & Annette Rothstein Theatre,

June 18, 2023 at 7:30 pm, 950 W 41st Ave. Vancouver BC

Petra Ernyei was born in Prague, her mother is Czech, her father was born in England to Hungarian-Slovak parents. She grew up in a musical environment—her father Andrej was a well-known musician and banjoist playing traditional jazz. The beginning of her professional career as a jazz singer started when Petra performed for the first time with her father’s band at the age of 18 at the Sacramento Jazz Festival in California. She sang with big bands (Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra, Prague Swing Orchestra) and in 2008 she established her own “Petra Ernyei Quartet.” Since this time, Petra has been performing on Czech, Germany, England, Austria, Norway, Hungary, Portugal, Bulgaria, Russia and Greece stages. Petra was inspired by the jazz vocalists of the 50s and 60s, a period in which America lived jazz to the fullest. In fact, it was a CD of Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly that inspired the launch of the JAZZ SIX project. She is also dedicated to the music of Jewish authors. In 2021 she released a CD “This is me” together with guitarist Adam Tvrdy and double bassist Petr Dvorský. The album features Sephardic, Hebrew and jazz songs, processed in original arrangements. In 2020-2022, she gave concerts with the program “Tribute to Jewish authors” in synagogues all over the Czech Republic as part of the “Ten Stars project” which is devoted to the restoration of destroyed synagogues in the Czech Republic.

Adam Tvrdy is a guitarist and composer with a multi-genre and intense expression. In his interpretations and improvisations he focuses on his original musical ideas while respecting traditions and a vocabulary of the musical style being played. Adam studied jazz and classical guitar at the prestigious Prague Jazz School. Adam Tvrdy has a list of experiences and collaborations with some of the top artists from his domestic scene as well as world scene. As a guest member he participated in shows and recordings with the Czech National Symphonic Orchestra conducted by maestro Ennio Morricone in Prague and at Abbey Road Studios in London, recording the original soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Thanks to more occasional work with the Orchestra (CNSO) Adam played in project like The Beatles Night and the Hollywood Night conducted by Carl David. Another of Adam’s experience with film music was meeting and working with composer and trumpet player Terence Blanchard on his soundtrack for Red Tails.

Jodi Proznick is a Canadian jazz bassist, composer, educator and producer. In 2019, she was named Jazz Artist of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards and has been nominated for two Juno Awards. She was also a recipient of the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor’s Arts and Music Awards in 2022.

Jodi Proznick has earned a reputation as one of Canada’s finest jazz artists. She has won numerous National Jazz Awards, including Bassist of the Year in ’08 and ’09. Her group, the Jodi Proznick Quartet, was awarded the Acoustic Group of the Year and Album of the Year in ‘08 and the Galaxie Rising Star at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in ‘04.

In addition to leading her own group, Jodi has performed with many of Canada’s top jazz musicians, including PJ Perry, Don Thompson, Kirk MacDonald, Guido Basso, Oliver Gannon, Dee Daniels, Phil Dwyer, and Laila Biali. She is regularly in demand to perform and record with visiting jazz artists including Michael Bublé, Byron Stripling, Michael Feinstein, David “Fathead” Newman, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ed Thigpen, Jeff Hamilton, Peter Bernstein, Charles McPherson, Seamus Blake, George Coleman, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy, Harold Mabern, Eric Alexander, Jim Rotundi, Eddie Daniels, Jeff Hamilton and Lewis Nash.

” legend of Czech blues and jazz rock”

Friday, September 20, 2019 at 8pm, The Revue Stage, Granville Island

• Lubos Andrst – guitar
• Vit Pospisil – keyboards
• Filip Benesovsky – bass guitar
• Michal Hejna – drums
• Bill Runge – saxophone

  
LUBOŠ ANDRŠT (26 July 1948 – 20 December 2021) is rightly considered to be one of the most respected blues and jazz musicians in the Czech Republic.  He is especially known for his proficiency and dexterity with the guitar.  For years, he has regularly performed his musical undertakings, where many of his band members alternated and were swapped out.  Andrst’s collaboration with other soloists, especially with the singer Michal Prokop, is significant. The repertoire of  Luboš Andršt’s current band, Lubos Andrst Group, is based on Andrst’s own harmoniously elaborate compositions, which reflect the influences of jazz, Latin music and blues.  These connections are evident in the two albums: “Acoustic set” and “Moment In Time”. Andrst’s unmistakably clever guitar play is complemented by two new members to the band: the experienced and highly sought-after musicians Filip Benešovský and Vít Pospíšil. On the other hand, drummer Michal Hejna, who has been playing with the group for 20 years, plays exclusively in instrumental bands like Rhythm Desperados, Jiří Stivín and others. Currently, his main responsibility, however, is the operation of the jazz club AghaRTA, where the LA Group performs regularly.  Michal Hejna has also been instrumental in organizing the AghaRTA Prague Jazz Festival.

BILL RUNGE has been a successful performer, composer, arranger, and orchestrator for over 30 years. A multi-instrumentalist, he has performed and recorded on saxophones, flutes, clarinets, electric and string bass, piano and other keyboards, guitar, pennywhistle, and accordion. Bill has performed live shows at Jazz, Folk and Blues Festivals in Canada, Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. with such artists as The Funk Bros., Colin James, and Natalie Cole, Michael Buble, Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, Bo Didley, Sheena Easton, Roger Daltry, John Hammond Jr., Ben E. King, Bob Hope, Robert Cray, Marilyn Crispell, Don Thompson, Kenny Wheeler, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dave Holland, Slide Hampton, Jeff Healey, Michael Burgess, Strippers Union and dozens more.

Concert Review:

Thank you very much for the invitation to the Lubos  Andrst sensational jazz group you brought to the Granville Island stage.  We could have listened to them all night to the next morning.  They were fantastic to listen to as they were innovative and ,as you know , I play drums in a band and we would call these players  “very tight”. They read each other well and the audience.  The local saxophone player they brought on stage fit in extremely well with I know would have been with very little “practice time”.  Signs of true musicians!!
I understand that the concert was in celebration of the 30 year reunion of Czechoslovakia Velvet Revolution.  You pick a great choice to celebrate that!!  We hope there will be a 3000 year reunion!  Bring them back for the 31st reunion !!!
All the best and thanks again. Great evening……   Will and Helen

“ the unique fusion of folk and jazz”

featuring Paul Rushka and Jesse Cahill

Emil Viklicky :  As a pianist, Emil often performs in international ensembles alongside musicians from the U.S. and other European countries. Back in 1983-89 Emil worked with the Lou Blackburn International Quartet, the Benny Bailey Quintet, and American multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson. He has made frequent appearances in Finland (with the Finnczech Quartet and in particular with Jarmo Sermila) and Norway (with the Czech-Norwegian Big Band and Harald Gundhus) and has performed in the USA, Japan, Mexico, Israel, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands (at the North Sea Festival) and elsewhere. The editor of Rolling Stone Jan Wenner wrote of Emil that “It was a delightful surprise to see such first-class, top-of-the-line jazz in Prague.”

Emil has become noted for his unique synthesis of the melodicism and tonalities of Moravian folk song with modern jazz. As English critic Euan Dixon wrote in 2005 “Emil Viklicky is one of those European jazz pianists who successfully incorporated elements of his indigenous folk culture into jazz”.

As composer, Viklicky has attracted attention abroad primarily for having created a synthesis of the expressive elements of modern jazz with the melodicism and tonalities of Moravian folk song that is distinctly individual in contemporary jazz. Besides this, however, he also composes ‘straight-ahead’ modern jazz as well as chamber and orchestral works that utilize certain elements of the New Music, and at times his music requires a combination of classical and jazz performers.

Viklicky’s work has gained him quite a number of prestigious awards. These include second prize in the 1985 Monaco jazz composition competition (for “Cacharel”), the 1991 Film and Television Association prize for music for animated films, second prize at the 1994 Marimolin contemporary music competition in Boston (for “Tristana”), a 1996 Prague award for electroacoustic music (for “Paradise Park”), a 1996 Czech Music Fund prize for use of folk music in art music, and first prize in a 2000 international OPERA composition competition in Prague (for the opera Phaedra). In 2009 Emil recorded CD “Sinfonietta – Janáček of Jazz”, for VENUS Records, Japan,with George Mraz – bass, Lewis Nash – drums. Another cd for VENUS followed in 2011: “Kafka on the Shore”. This cd got Nissan prize for “The best sound CD in Japan”.  In 2011 Emil received “Medal of Merrit” from Czech president Vaclav Klaus for lifelong music achievements.

Paul Rushka:  Award-winning bassist Paul Rushka has engaged audiences throughout North America, Europe and Asia with his sonorous tone, assured confident pulse, and eloquent soloing since 1997. Active as a performer, composer, arranger, and educator, Paul is a first-call bassist in Vancouver. He has appeared on stage with numerous jazz luminaries, including John Taylor, Joe LaBarbera, Julian Priester, Jimmy Greene, Peter Bernstein, Will Vinson, Mike LeDonne, Danny Grissett, Jeremy Pelt, Brad Turner, Ross Taggart, Lorne Lofsky, Kirk MacDonald, Kevin Dean, André White, Joe Sullivan, Josh Rager, and many more. In 2003, Paul won a Western Canadian Music Award for Best Jazz Album for his work on the Mike Allen Trio’s Dialectic. He is currently on the faculty at the VSO (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra) School of Music.

Jesse Cahill:  Jesse has become one of the busiest drummers on the Canadian music scene. He has worked with jazz legends like David “Fathead” Newman, George Coleman, Harold Mabern, Red Holloway, Dr. Eddie Henderson, Charles MacPherson and Bobby Shew. He has also performed, toured, and recorded with many internationally recognized artists such as Eric Alexander, Peter Bernstein, Vincent Herring, Jim Snidero, Terrell Stafford, Mike Ledonne, Pat Bianchi, Joe Magerelli, Jim Rotondi, Steve Davis, Ryan Kysor and George Colligan.

Friday, May 25, 2018 at 8pm, The Revue Stage, Granville Island

Vancouver review by Bill Hood, Highlife Records

It seems that some piano players and composers have a direct line to the traditional folk music in the part of the world that they come from. In addition to Jelly Roll Morton, Ellington, and Mingus you might think of the names Dvorak and Janacek, to say nothing of Bartok and Kodaly. Messing with, while still embracing, traditional music has a long history. Sometimes we call it modern classical music and some times we call it jazz.

As we made our way into the intimate confines of the Revue Stage on Granville Island, on Friday, May 25, 2018, word spread, amongst the assembled crowd, that that sound check had been electric, and that we were in for something special.

Friday, May 26, 2017 at 8pm 
Shadbolt Centre for the Art, Deer Lake Ave., Burnaby BC
general admission $35.00 (service charges included)

Do not miss this unique work of Raymond Carver, a short story master and one of the greatest writers of American literature in the 80s of the last century! Performed by Jiri Labus with piano accompaniment by Emil Viklicky, you will find a great combination of excellent acting and virtuoso jazz improvisation!

Background of the author:

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) worked at a sawmill while editing a literary magazine. He wrote stories included in anthologies of best American stories of the year while selling cinema playbills in Hollywood. He won prestigious literary prizes but was dismissed from his job. An expert on and admirer of Chekhov, Flaubert and many other European artists, Carver was four times hospitalized because of his acute alcoholism. A master of short prose, he considered himself first and foremost a poet. He remains the most important American writer of the 1980s.

Performers: Emil Viklicky and Jirí Lábus

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.

Vancouver show photos