Reduta (Prague)

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Entrance to Reduta (Prague 1, Národní 20) around 2010

Reduta Jazz Club or Reduta Theater , usually more simply called and known as Reduta , is a well-known establishment of the theater and music scene in Prague , originally a wine bar, later a jazz club and music theater. After 1957/1958, Reduta became the center and center of attraction for actors, singers, musicians, and writers and a melting pot of the later avant-garde cultural institutions of a similar kind and especially the Czechoslovak cabaret such as Semafor , Divadlo Na zábradlí , Kladivadlo , Paravan and others. It is also an important stage for jazz musicians from all over the world.

Reduta Jazz Club and Reduta Theater

The premises on the national road not far from Wenceslas Square consist of two basement floors, and after a few years they are also used for two scenes: a jazz club in the upper basement and a theater cabaret, also music theater, is located at the bottom. Both institutions were established around the turn of the year 1957/1958

history

The Reduta Club and Theater was opened on October 13th in the premises of a wine tavern by the bassist Jan Arnet with a concert of prominent guests from the jazz scene: Karel Vlach , Ferdinand Havlík , Luděk Hulan , Jan Hammer , Vlasta Průchová , "JA Quartet" (Jan Arnet, Rudolf Rokl , Karel Růžička and others), "Modern Jazz Quintet" ( Evžen Jegorov and others), Antonín Gondolán , Karel Krautgartner , and especially the bands Akord club (where Suchý also played) and Studio 5 , which then appeared for a while in Reduta.

In addition to musical appearances by well-known jazz musicians, at a time when jazz was more of a “musica non grata” in communist Czechoslovakia, Reduta's further development was shaped by a special form of presentation of the spoken word. In addition to musicians, Reduta became a meeting place for writers and actors, including Jiří Suchý , Ivan Vyskočil , Jiří Stivín and Martin Kratochvíl . It was Ivan Vyskočil who shaped a new form of literary cabaret and communication with the audience and who practiced it together with Jiří Suchý: Vyskočil called it " text appeal ", alluding to sex appeal, and the intention was to find a form how to act very directly on the audience with a text on stage, d. H. can appeal - whether it is spoken, played or sung text. Their performance required a strong ability to improvise. Together with Suchý, Vyskočil wrote and performed around 40 “text appeals”, as such stage plays were called, the first one, “O lidském trablu”, on January 15, 1958.

The theater and literary critic Vladimír Just speaks of Reduta of this time as the "first phase of an unexpected development of the broad-based alternative theater and paratheater activity" of the later years and recalls that it soon followed in countless cities, including smaller ones Czechoslovakia had countless “reduta-like” small stages in which “text appealing” became a tradition - not only in Divadlo Na zábradlí (Vyskočil and Suchý 1958), Semafor (Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr 1959) or Divadlo Rokoko (1957/58 ) in Prague.

Reduta not only made it possible for various musicians and bands to appear on stage, but also supported other small ensembles and allowed them to perform when they did not have a stage, for example Divadlo Járy Cimrmana or Pantomima Alfreda Jarryho (after January 1972). Reduta played a key role in the development of the so-called "small theaters" - cabaret - in Czechoslovakia and in the establishment of "text appels" as a new form of performance and literary cabaret. The artists who performed in Reduta also organized the International Jazz Festival Prague , which was held annually from 1964.

Later development

After 1968, after the breakdown of the Prague Spring , development stagnated and some branches, such as the projects by Ctibor Turba , Boris Hybner and Richard Rýda , inspired by absurd theater, surrealism and jazz, were banned. In 1970 Vyskočil had to leave Reduta, the theater was taken over by the state company for music Pragokonzert , and the artistic direction increasingly departed from the original intentions.

The Reduta Jazz Club fared better, benefiting from the fact that the Prague concert brought several internationally known musicians to Prague, who then came to Reduta for jam sessions after their concerts : Chris Barber , Aki Takase , Albert Mangelsdorff , Cecil Taylor , Tony Scott , Acker Bilk and others. The jazz club gradually took on the progressive role that the theater had until then with the text appeals. It gradually developed into a place where avant-garde artists and intellectuals met with dissidents and opponents of the normalization process , and influenced the slowly reforming artistic and political culture that led to the so-called Velvet Revolution in 1989 .

It was only after 1990 that the theater ensemble was able to evade censorship. Today a relatively rich program is offered, in addition to jazz and theater also pantomime, children's theater Minaret, to performances of the black theater combined with elements of the former Prague theater Laterna magika .

Trivia

  • The founders and operators of Reduta declare on their website that the name “Reduta” goes back to Hellenic Greece, which was used to describe places where entertainment and music were offered to the public.
  • After the Divadlo Járy Cimrmana theater had to leave its previous stage on a state order, it found an asylum in Reduta in January 1972; shortly thereafter, operations in Reduta were interrupted as a result of an order from the same authority and the Divadlo Járy Cimrmana was banned from performing anywhere in the city of Prague. Despite this ban, it can perform in Divadlo Na zábradlí from June 1972 and then returns to Reduta in September 1972.
  • President Bill Clinton , who was in Prague on a state visit in January 1994, also visited the Jazz Club Reduta on the same occasion, where he received a tenor saxophone as a present from the then President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel , and one himself Amateur saxophone player, with whom he then immediately appeared in the session.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Reduta , keyword in Český hudební slovník osob a institucí (Czech music lexicon of persons and institutions), online at: ceskyhudebnislovnik.cz/
  2. ↑ a b The Reduta Jazz Club website about the Jazz Club, online at: redutajazzclub.cz/
  3. ↑ a b c d The Reduta Jazz Club website about the theater, online at: redutajazzclub.cz/
  4. ↑ a b Reduta oslavovala , server of the Prague 1 district, from October 13, 2009, online at: praha1.cz/
  5. ↑ Accord club , keyword in Český hudební slovník osob a institucí (Czech music lexicon of persons and institutions), online at: ceskyhudebnislovnik.cz/
  6. ↑ a b c d History of the Reduta Jazz Club website, online at: redutajazzclub.cz/ ; English translation on: europejazz.net/
  7. ↑ Alexander Komlosi, The Creator of the Discipline. Ivan Vyskočil , online at: interactingwiththeinnerpartner.org/
  8. ↑ Andrew Kingsford-Smith, Reduta Jazz Club: The Revolutionary History of Prague's First Jazz Venue , online at: theculturetrip.com/
  9. ↑ a b c Vladimír Just, Nebyl jen Semafor a Zábradlí aneb Malá divadla jako hnutí , online at: amaterskedivadlo.cz/
  10. ↑ 40 let divadla Járy Cimrmana , online at: cimrman.at/
  11. ↑ Prahu navštívil americký prezident Clinton , report of Czech Television Česká televise, online (text) on: ceskatelevize.cz/ ; President Clinton play on sax in REDUTA Prague , recording of the sequence on you tube, online at: youtube.com/

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