Eugene Cicero

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Eugen Cicero (1967)

Eugen Cicero (actually Eugen Ciceu, born June 27, 1940 in Klausenburg , Romania ; †  December 5, 1997 in Zurich , Switzerland ) was a classically trained Romanian jazz pianist . He was with his jazz - interpretations and -Bearbeitungen of baroque , classical and romantic known works. His interpretations of jazz standards often included musical quotations from classical works .

He played each piece as an improvisation , and so no performance was identical to another, as evidenced by more than 70 recordings on phonograms. In 1976 he received the German Record Prize for his arrangement of compositions by Franz Schubert .

Life

Eugen Cicero began at the age of four years playing the piano, with six he gave a Mozart - Piano Concerto with the Symphony Orchestra of Cluj. His parents, his father Teodor Ciceu was an Orthodox priest , his mother Livia - of Hungarian descent - a professional choir singer , supported his musical training. At the age of eleven he took lessons from Aurelia Cionca , one of the most famous pianists in Romania. Classes with Ana Pittiș followed. He later studied at the Bucharest University of Music , from which he was expelled from communist Romania for political reasons . He was resumed two years later ( period of political thaw in communist Romania ), and in 1962 he became a university professor of music.

In the early 1960s he went on a concert tour with a sextet to East Berlin . After the musicians had received a day visa for West Berlin from the Romanian embassy , they never returned from there. Most of the band's musicians went to North America , Cicero stayed in West Germany. The drummer Charly Antolini brought him to the record company SABA / MPS , where the two recorded seven records in the following years. From West Berlin he moved on to West Germany and Switzerland , where he met his future wife, the dancer Lili Cziczeo. In 1965 he recorded the LP Rokoko-Jazz , which was sold over a million times worldwide.

In 1966 he returned to Berlin and spent a substantial part of his further life here. He played from 1965 to 1971 at the RIAS dance band and later with the SFB Big Band by Paul Kuhn , with the Munich Philharmonic , the arranger and big band leader Peter Herbolzheimer and many other jazz greats. In 1970 his son Roger Cicero was born, who was also a well-known jazz musician until his death in March 2016 . In 1980 the marriage with Lili Cziczeo was divorced. In 1982 he moved to Switzerland and had a daughter. He performed frequently in Japan and made a number of recordings there. Eugen Cicero died on December 5, 1997 at the age of 57 after a cerebral infarction .

Music and personality

He was very popular with many of his colleagues for his generosity - he often shared his earnings with financially less successful musician colleagues. The press as well as the promotion of his record company describe his music as a mixture of jazz and classical music. Cicero knew how to integrate the classic elements seamlessly into his game. He could switch from the American triplet style to the baroque classical style at any time without losing the bow or creating a stylistic break. An example of his improvisational art is his imaginative interpretation of Mozart's Variations on the children's song Ah vous dirai je Maman ( Tomorrow Santa Claus is coming ).

He often appeared as a soloist. The technical difference between right and left hand was completely eliminated with him, similar to Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson . Cicero preferred playing with other musicians. The "Cicero run" is known, a series of very fast, chromatically sloping minor thirds that are only played with one - mostly the right - hand and which Cicero often used as a connecting element or color pattern between two themes. Eugen Cicero received isolated criticism because of its temporary proximity to so-called U-music - comparable to James Last , Paul Kuhn or Erwin Lehn . Cicero was a pioneer of crossover long before the term found its way into music theory .

Discography

Extract from over 70 recordings:

  • Rococo Jazz, 1965, with Peter Witte on bass and Charly Antolini on drums
  • Cicero's Chopin (1965)
  • In Town (1965)
  • Piano games (1965)
  • Swinging Tshaikovsky (1966)
  • Plays Liszt (1967)
  • Eugen Cicero Quintet (1968)
  • The One and Only (19 ??)
  • And now Cicero is playing (19 ??)
  • Balkan Rhapsody (1970)
  • Marching the Classics (1970)
  • My Lyrics in Tokyo (1972)
  • Live at the Berlin Philharmonie (1972)
  • Gerling concert 1 (1973)
  • Cicero in London (1973)
  • Cicero's Chopin Festival (1973)
  • Swinging Classics (1973) (double LP, one Liszt, one Tchaikovsky)
  • Cicero Plays Schubert (1975), with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn under the direction of Jörg Faerber (German Record Prize)
  • Star portrait (1976)
  • Cicero's Concerto (1976)
  • Eugen Cicero - Piano Solo (1976)
  • For My Friends (1977)
  • In Concert (1977)
  • Live in Berlin (1978)
  • SoloPiano (1978), live concert
  • INTERMEZZO & SWING & ROMANCE (19 ??), Eugen Cicero & HMM Studio Orchestra
  • Ballads (1979)
  • Music of the Generations (1979), private edition of the Gerling Group
  • Nice to Meet You (1979)
  • Spring Song (1983)
  • The Classic New Clothes (1983)
  • Turkish March (1983)
  • Don't Stop My Dreams (1984)
  • Jazz Bach (1985)
  • A Love's Dream (1985)
  • Piano Dreams, (re-release of A Love's Dream , 2002), with the Munich Philharmonic
  • Berlin Reunion (1986)
  • Rococo Jazz II (1987)
  • Classic modern (1987)
  • A Touch of Love (1988)
  • Whisper from Eternity (1988), not yet published in Germany
  • Humoresque in Budapest (1989)
  • The Last Scene (1993)
  • , As a promotional tool for the Maritim in Music (1993) Maritim Hotels added
  • Plays Gershwin (1993)
  • Easy Listening Lounge (1993)
  • Dream Notes (1993)
  • Eugen Ciceu - Cicero Jazz (1993)
  • Handmade (1991), recorded as a promotional album for the WERSI Grand Piano
  • Lullabies (1995)
  • Swinging Piano Classics, December 13th 1996, live concert from Überlingen , with Decebal Badila on bass

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Gypsy Schönfeld in an interview
  2. ↑ Roger Cicero GQ Star Portrait ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. gq-magazin.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gq-magazin.de
  3. ↑ FAZ, No. 4 / Page Z6 of January 5, 2008
  4. ^ Died: Eugene Cicero . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1997, p. 234 ( Online - Dec. 15, 1997 ).
  5. ↑ 'Hörzu Diskothek 10', 'SHZEL 87'
  6. ↑ 'selected sound studio 9011'. On the A-side there are seven pieces by Cicero, on the B-side seven pieces by the 'Jan Troysen Dance Band'
  7. ↑ Electrecord - EDE 04285 (LP), Jazz Diaspora - no. 1 (youtube)
  8. ↑ Entry on Discogs
  9. ↑ with Aladár Pege (b) and Willy Ketzer (dr). L&R Records. Audio samples here
  10. ↑ Interview with Reinhard Franz
personal data
SURNAME Cicero, Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ciceu, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian jazz pianist
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Cluj-Napoca , Transylvania
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 1997
Place of death Zurich , Switzerland