Jaromír Honzák

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Jaromir Honzák at a concert in Prague's Jazz Dock, 2011

Jaromír Honzák (* 31 August 1959 in Litoměřice ) is a Czech jazz - bassist , composer and music educator .

Live and act

Jaromír Honzák's father was a swing trumpeter and band leader. Honzák began to play the piano at the age of six and learned the double bass at the age of 14 . After graduating from the Teplice Conservatory in 1982 and completing military service in an army band in Prague, he worked in the Czech jazz scene. He was a co-founder of the Naima formation - named after the Coltrane title of the same name - with which their first album was created in 1985. Since then he has worked with guest musicians such as Art Farmer , Phil Wilson , Don Friedman , Allan Praskin , Giovanni Basso , Amina Claudine Myers and Victor Lewis .

In 1989 Honzák received a scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston , where he had lessons with Bruce Gertz , Hal Crook , John LaPorta and Rick Peckham ; During this time he played with Jorge Rossy , Kurt Rosenwinkel , Roy Hargrove , Mark Turner and Chris Cheek . After his return to the Czech Republic in 1990 he made a series of recordings under his own name, worked with Czech musicians such as Iva Bittová , Karel Růžička and Vladimír Václavek , but also with Josefine Lindstrand . Honzák also performs regularly in Poland. a. with Jan Wróblewski , Zbigniew Namysłowski and Krzesimir Dębski . He worked u. a. on recordings by Emil Viklický ( Lacrimosa - Má Je Pomsta 1995) .

Honzák is currently working with his own quartet / quintet formation and a quartet called Face of the Bass with the pianist Beata Hlavenková and the drummer Roman Vícha. He also plays with the drum and bass ensemble Sato San-To and is a member of the Eben Brothers Band. He has performed at international jazz festivals in Helsinki, the Ingolstadt Jazz Days , Leverkusener Jazz Days , the Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw and in 1996 at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal .

Honzák heads the jazz department at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague, where he has been teaching bass and improvisation since 2003.

Honzák should not be confused with the Czech clarinetist and saxophonist of the same name (* 1929).

Awards

Several of his albums have been awarded the Angel Prize for the best Czech jazz recordings of the year. In 2009, his album A Question to All Your Answers won third place in the Instrumental Jazz Album category of the Just Plain Folks Award.

Discographic notes

  • Getting There Together (PJ Music, 1995)
  • Earth Life (Cube Metier, 2000)
  • Present Past (Indies, 2003)
  • A Question to All Your Answers (Animal Music, 2007)
  • Little Things (Animal Music, 2009) with Chris Cheek
  • Jaromír Honzák / Sissel Vera Pettersen Blood Sings: The Music of Suzanne Vega (Sono 2012)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Radio Praha
  2. ^ Information on the David Dorůžka-Josefine Lindstrand Quartet
  3. ↑ Jaromír Honzák at Discogs (English)
  4. ↑ Beata Hlavenkova ( Memento from October 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ a b c web presence / biography
  6. ↑ Program of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal 1996 ( Memento of September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Honzák, Jaromír
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech jazz bassist, composer and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Litoměřice