Press
WWW.BEND.CZ is a relatively new name: it originated only in 2002. However, its credits comprise concerts at jazz festivals in Rokycany, Karlovy Vary, Hradec Králové, Přerov and Slaný, and the CD Miles Smiles with the voca list Magdalena Rezková, dedicated to Miles Davis' repertoire. Its personnell sounds like a survey of the history and presence of Czech jazz. The trumpet player Václav Týfa (1943) was as early as 1962 one of the prominent m embers of Karel Vlach big band and since 1970, with Ladislav Štaidl's orchestra, he accompanied Karel Gott. Svatopluk Košvanec (1936), trombone player and one of the best Czech jazz soloists, worked since 1970 as a member of Laco Deczi's Jazz Cellula and the Czech Radio Jazz Orchestra. Side by side with them there are experienced musicians of the middle generation such as the drummer Ivan Audes of the tenor sax player Milan Krajíc from th e cirle of Milan Svoboda, another important name of Czech jazz from the seventies, And the orchestra includes also members of the young generation who have appeared on the Czech jazz scene only recently. A combination li ke this gives the band a special chemistry joining the classical cultivation with jazz experience and enthusiasm, thus equipping it with the qualification for mastering even unusual tasks. The leader of the band is the pianist, composer, arranger and conductor Kryštof Marek (1967). His activities include various kinds and genres of music: 1999-2003 he was conductor of the Pilsen Music Theatre, where he prep ared 10 operettas and musicals, including his own jazz operetta Kristian II. In Prague he conducts the musical Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. He grew up with Milan Svoboda's Contraband with which he recorded 5 CDs, and h e took part also in the jubilee concert on Svoboda's 50th birthday. He is a member of the jazz trio of the drummer Josef Vejvoda, son of the composer of Beer Barrel Polka. And he also participaed in the Agon Ensemble, dea ling with contemporary European music. With Agon he appeared in the U.S.A. and in Canada, with the Black Theatre in the Arab Emirates, and in Carnegie Hall he accompanied Karel Gott. One can expect that the music of his WWW.BEND.CZ will not function like just another jazz big band. Even its sound is different: three of the five saxophone players play also the clarinets so that this section sometimes sounds more like woodwinds of a classical orchestra than like typical jazz saxes, Tutti of the brass or of the whole orchestras have not the character of jazz riffs, but rather of cultivated and precise entries, commenting on what is happening under them. And that's a quiet narrative spun out by a soloist who has something to say tells his story in complete agreement with his partner, pianist and composer Kryštof Marek, who prepared this album for him. Tony Lakatos (1958), whose father and younger brother are outstanding Gipsy violinists, began to play saxophone at the age of 15, and graduated from jazz department of the Budapest Bela Bartók Conservatory in 1979. In 1981 he moved to Germany and there he joined the ranks of European top saxophonists. He performed in the U.S.A., in Japan, South Africa, India, Singapore, Indonesia and many other countries, and he taught also in the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, England and the U.S.A. His album with Kryštof Marek's WWW.BEND.CZ enriches his profile by tones, opening new moods and expressions for today's jazz. )
author: dr.Lubomír Dorůžka