Showing posts with label Friedrich Gulda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friedrich Gulda. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2013

Jazz Mirrors Iran#1: Tehran

photo by Reza Hakiminejad

Imagine this: A tenor saxophone and bass mimic in sound the pace of rush hour walkers. A trumpet, sounding like a car horn, pops in and out, pulsating along with the beat of the drummer, whose brushes on the snare create an interplay that brings to life the image of a bustling urban city.
No cobblestone streets or the smell of Parisian bread; no green leaves overhanging narrow passageways or the sound of French in the background. This is not Europe. It’s Iran that is being depicted in cool jazz tones.

Each Monday for the next ten weeks I will feature a jazz tune that reflects a part of Iran, both as an actual place on the map and as a pure creation of art. This is Iran according to American (or non-American) artists in the 20th century. It is the same country that makes daily news headlines, but thanks to the masters of misinformation in the media, the more that is heard, the less that is learned.

                           Teheran- Friedrich Gulda                              

Tehran, sometimes spelled in French or German as Teheran, is a metropolis of 8.5 million people and the capital city of Iran. Witnessing many changes in the past 150 years, it was, and still is, a gigantic mechanism dealing with endless urban issues. Tehranis, sharp and open, and culturally closer to the people of those capital cities of the Eastern Europe, have two simultaneous battles to fight: one, to find a way out of the maddening traffic of the highways and streets of Tehran, and then, to find ways of expressing their social and political dissatisfaction in some creative and subversive ways.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

London Jazz Festival: Celebrating Friedrich Gulda


What is the definition of good music? There are thousands of answers to that. Mine, at this moment, is a simple or even primitive one: when you leave the venue, whether a tiny, basement club or a 2000-seat concert hall, you still have the beat, the vibe and the mood. So the actual concert is only the beginning of a longer personal association with that piece of music.

Last night, after the first set with the BBC Concert Orchestra playing Fredrich Gulda was finished, and when an interval of 20 minutes began in anticipation for the next set with Shabaka Hutchings, me, standing on the terrace of Queen Elizabeth Hall and its magisterial view to the Thames, and smoking the life away in hand-rolled cigarettes, felt that music of the first set was still physically present inside my - growing in me. What moved me so profoundly and brought the joy so easily was Fredrich Gulda's cello concerto, conducted by Mark Lockhart and soloed by Benjamin Hughes whose sensitivity as a great player was mixed with authority and preciseness. What could easily get into your system was a joyous "mish mash" (Lockhart's words) of the Viennese swing and marches, flickering sounds of woodwinds on the background which elaborate the tense presence of cello. It was good enough to literally overshadow what was followed in the concert.


Friday, August 17, 2012

Friedrich Gulda Big Band Music


"The jazz greats, along with Bach and Mozart, shall be my role models" -- Friedrich Gulda

One of the problems of contemporary jazz scene, and even jazz fandom, is a certain negligence toward modern big bands of the 1960s and 1970s, especially those assembled in Europe. While the swing big bands of the 1930s and 1940s, and the small-combo jazz of the post-war era enjoy a wide public recognition by being constantly reissued, great European big bands stay alone on the dusty shelves of the old vinyl shops - sacred items for a small bunch of people who want to explore the beauty of modern classical-oriented jazz charts by those European artists who were sharing a same language as the American jazz expatriates.

The 2010 release of Friedrich Gulda Big Band Music brings one of the golden eras of the European big band to the digital age. This double-CD presents Viennese pianist, composer, conductor and arranger Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) and his big bands from 1962 to 1972.