Robert Balzar Trio Videos

To celebrate the RBT / John Abercrombie tour here are some videos of Robert and his Trio in action, posted to YouTube by the man himself.

"Tale":


"Alone":


"Remember Hymn":


"Eronel":


"Night":

GigTips: February 2009

The last of the winter months is here, and unlike the last couple of years we have had a real winter in Prague. There has been a decent amount of snow and ice, and for a fortnight the temperature never threatened to rise above freezing. In a few weeks the warmer days of spring should be with us, but until then remember to wrap up well before you go out!

Our Tips for February begin at AghaRTA Jazz Centrum, home of the fun and funky Rhythm Desperados (24, 25/2). Playing original material and standards (their version of “Birdland” is a cracker) they combine excellent playing with showmanship and humour, producing a joyous evening of entertainment. Emil Viklický will be dropping through (13/2) to compensate for any misfortune that this unlucky Friday delivers, and woodwind master Jiří Stivín will be putting on two shows with auspicious numbering (2, 22/2).

The Robert Balzar Trio are also calling in twice at the USP Jazz Lounge (12, 28/2) as they prepare for their tour with guitarist John Abercrombie. The RBT have changed their set around a lot for 2009 and have a slightly harder edge thanks to such pieces as “Vinohradská Street 32” and “C.T.A”. Other notables at USP this month are the young guitarists Libor Šmoldas with his Quartet (7/2) and Adam Tvrdý with his Trio (25/2).

If you are in the mood for some blues then there’s always the Charles Bridge Jazz Club, where the Luboš Andršt Blues Band (7, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28/2) and the Alice Springs Blues Band (6, 13, 20, 27/2) come highly recommended.

Our final recommendation for February is the trio of Richard Bona, Steve Gadd, and Sylvain Luc. They will be at the Lucerna Music Bar (4/2) as the first act of the spring AghaRTA Prague Jazz Festival. World class musicians in a world class jazz city.

Please remember that all listings are subject to change so confirm with the venue to avoid disappointment. And please remember to tell them that you saw the gig listed on Prague Jazz!

News: Prague Jazz on GlobalPost

We are happy to announce that Prague Jazz is being syndicated through exciting new venture GlobalPost as one of their World's Top 350 Blogs.

More information can be found at www.globalpost.com. Their Czech Republic page can be found at http://www.globalpost.com/home/czech-republic.

News: Robert Balzar Trio / John Abercrombie Tour

Following the release of the excellent Tales album last year, the Robert Balzar Trio are finally going out on the road with American jazz guitar legend John Abercrombie. They will be hitting Prague's Lucerna Music Bar on March 22nd.

There will also be a rare chance for British jazz fans see one of the Czech Republic's best outfits in action, with two dates (15, 16/3) at London's famous Pizza Express jazz club.

Full tour dates can be found at www.robertbalzar.com.

CD Review: Luboš Andršt Blues Band

Blues Grooves
Fontana Music library FN 164, 2004

Albums of library music can be curious beasts. They are not often destined for the limelight, usually languishing in the utilitarian obscurity of a need-to-know basis. Put together for television, radio, and any other situation where music is required as a backdrop, they are the session musicians, the backroom boys, and the unknown soldiers of the record world. Making library recordings is part and parcel of the life of a working musician in reality, just as much as world tours and endless groupies are an essential part of any rock’n’roll fantasy. They may not arrive with the fanfare of a “normal” record, but they can contain some damn good music.

Blues Grooves, from the Fontana Music Library, is a Luboš Andršt Blues Band album in thin disguise. With Luboš are his regular rhythm section of Wimpy Tichota on bass and Pavel Razím on drums. Organ is provided by prolific Czech player Jan Kořínek, and there’s some down and dirty blues harmonica from Ondřej Konrád.

There are twelve original tracks, all penned by Andršt, and mostly given unromantic practical names such as “Major Blues” or “Relaxed Funky”. Each is given a brief description in the liner notes to aid hurried selection by hassled media underlings, ordered to find a suitable blues tune for the given occasion. Like all library albums there is no sense of continuation or notable structure in the order of the pieces. It would be unusual for the tracks to heard in their entirety, let alone the whole album. So what we have here is not a complex concept masterwork of elaborately constructed mini-epics, but rather a series of sketches, and like any artist’s sketchbook there is a rawness and vitality present. So this is not the Luboš Andršt Blues Band’s very own Mona Lisa, but rather a record of outlines and ideas. And it rocks.

Whatever the band does on this album it does at full pelt. “Good Time Boogie” opens the album with a ferocious roar before settling into a mid-tempo groove complete with a busy harmonica solo. It is guitar that dominates overall, and unashamedly so. Luboš spits, sprays and slides his killer licks all over the place, some of which will be familiar to people who have seen him play live and slip a few of them into his improvisations. The lovely main phrase from “After Midnight”, or something very like, has frequently raised its head onstage in the last year. Endless amusement for riff-spotters is close at hand with this album.

On a similar (and very fine) note, the inconspicuously titled “Minor Blues” sounds remarkably like the instrumental from the title track of the Everything I’ve Done album, released three years after Blues Grooves. It showcases some of Andršt’s best emotive blues playing, combining fearsome chops with raw feeling and mature good taste, and is one of the standout pieces in this collection.

There are some other notable cuts that deserve to be wrenched out of anonymity and given a wider audience. “Rumba Blues” is a joyous and fast-paced (172 bpm, according to the liner note) Latin-flavoured valedictory romp. Guitar and harmonica dance over bass and drums, and it is hard not to smile when you hear this fun-infused slab of sound. “Major Blues” on the other hand is a darker affair, opening with a gorgeous moment of gospel organ that leads into dirty, crying guitar. Kořínek also gets in a dextrous final solo towards the end. The playing all the way through is what you would expect it to be. Even if these guys are messing about they don’t mess about.

There are some good, original pieces of music on this album and it would be a shame if they were not appreciated. It is no grand statement or monumental personal opus and it has no pretensions to be anything of the like. It is a selection of “pure electric blues with hot guitar solos” (as the cover clearly states), and it is a good record of how the LABB sound when they’re working together in the studio. So get yourself a copy, crack open a beer, and notch your air guitar up to eleven. It’s one louder than ten, and it is the volume that this hidden album deserves.