Viklický/Frisell/Driscoll/Johnson: Window & Door

Driscoll, Kermit, Frisell, Bill, Johnson, Vinton, Viklicky, Emil

SU 6064-2

Emil Viklický's three major albums are now released on two separate compact discs. The solo debut In Holomóci města, recorded in 1977, is now supplemented as a bonus for Piano Suite 2. The Window and Doors CD summarizes all the recordings that Emil Viklický made in June 1979 with American teammates Bill Frisell, Kermit Driscoll and Vinton Johnson. They originally formed a separate album Okno (1980) and the first half of the album Dveře (1985).

Emil Viklický started playing jazz in the mid-sixties as a student at the Olomouc grammar school. He drew more attention to himself in 1974, when he joined Karel Velebný to SHQ and soon after became a member of the jazz-rock group Energit. He soon began to notice him abroad - for example, he won the international competition of jazz pianists in Lyon in 1976. An important milestone in his work was the album V Holomóci městě, reflecting the melody of Moravian folk songs. In addition to renowned jazzmen (guitarist Luboš Andršt, double bassist František Uhlíř, drummer Milan Vitoch), violinist Jan Beránek, a member of the Brno State Philharmonic, also plays on the album. The closeness to folk music here seems to foreshadow Viklický's later successful collaboration with Zuzana Lapčíková and Jiří Pavlica.

In the fall of 1977, Emil Viklický went on a one-year study stay at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He made many useful musical contacts here, which he used to record about seventy minutes of music with three American friends in Prague: fresh electric jazz, clearly influenced by funk, remarkable vitality of ideas and instrumentalist bravura. Guitarist Bill Frisell was far from the jazz superstar we know him now, but he played great then. All recordings were carefully remastered from the original tapes, the songs from the CD V Holomóci města are released on a compact disc for the first time.

CD x 1

Supraphon

4/9/12

099925606428