ROBERT BALZAR TRIO + GABRIELE MIRABASSI (CZ/IT)
Gabriele Mirabassi – clarinet, Robert Balzar – double bass, Stanislav Mácha – piano, Kamil Slezák – drums
One of the fixed post-revolutionary jazz stars is surely the Robert Balzar Trio, a critically acclaimed band from the highly experienced double bass player. Since they first appeared on the scene in 1996 they have managed to record six albums.
The album Travelling, published in 1998, was awarded the „Czech Record of the Year“ prize from a the prominent station called Czech Radio and another album Alone (2002) won the „Album of the Year“ and „Band of the Year“ awards in the Karel Velebný poll. Overnight was nominated for the Anděl award in 2005. Creative cooperation with the jazz guitar legend John Abercrombie resulted in the recording of the album Tales featuring John Abercrombie in 2008. The newest records Discover Who We Are and Vuja De feature a popular and Brno born pianist Jiří Levíček who used to have a second home in the United States for six years. The album was recorded and mixed by the one and only James Farber in New York City and thus serves as a new sound benchmark in Czech jazz realms.
The Robert Balzar Trio represents the top of our domestic mainstream jazz with a clear potential for a further rise. With each new album this united artistic entity has continued to treat listeners to excellence and give them a direct invitation to experience their musical insight and craft. The trio clearly knows how to benefit from the “working band” status. Many years of cooperation has provided Balzar´s ensemble with more freedom and emphasize mutual empathy as well as the ability to communicate effectively through their music. With the fresh change on the pianist´s and drummer´s posts, where Jiří Levíček and Kamil Slezák are quickly getting accustomed, a new creative energy and inspiration has emerged.
For the 2016 tour, the trio teamed up with one of the most intriguing musicians on the European scene, Gabriele Mirabassi. This great Italian clarinetist has proven equal boldness in classical music as well as jazz and in recent years he has done thorough search on Brazilian instrumental and popular music and on the music of South America in general. He also regularly collaborates with artists participating in projects involving theater, dance, songwriting, etc. His main jazz partners in recent years rank among the best the world has to offer: Richard Galliano, Enrico Rava, Enrico Pieranunzi, Marc Johnson, John Taylor, Steve Swallow, Stefano Battaglia, Roberto Gatto, Rabih Abu Khalil, Edmar Castaneda. In Brasil: Guinga, André Mehmari, Monica Salmaso, Sergio Assad, Trio Madeira Brasil, Orquestra a Base de Sopro di Curitiba and many others.
YARON HERMAN & ZIV RAVITZ (IL)
Yaron Herman – piano, Ziv Ravitz – drums, electronics
Yaron Herman was born on the 12th of July 1981. He started out on a promising career as a basketball player on the Israeli national junior team but that was cut short by a serious knee injury which quashed his sporting ambitions. He only decided to take up playing the piano, at the age of 16. His teacher was the renowned Opher Brayer, famous for his methods based on philosophy, mathematics and psychology. Yaron was soon giving his first performances in the most prestigious concert halls in Israel.
At 16, Yaron left for Boston where he planned to enroll at the Berklee College School of Music. He found it didn’t satisfy his craving for knowledge and discovery and decided to return to Tel Aviv. On the way back he stopped over in Paris, that evening he met some musicians during a jam session and was given a contract the very next day. He never left Paris from then on. It was a period of musical exchanges and getting to know people while he started to make a name for himself on the Parisian musical scene.
His enthusiasm and talent, surprising in someone so young, meant that he quickly became the pianist that everyone was talking about with admiration and stupefaction. He developed a theory of musical improvisation called « Real Time Composition » which earned him the chance to give a series of lectures at the Sorbonne and Ted Conferences later on.
In October 2005 he recorded his first piano solo album Variations. The album received particularly good reviews and Yaron started to give his first solo performances in Europe, in South America, in the United States and in China where he was the first Jazz pianist to play in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
In 2007 he was elected Adami Jazz Talent by the French artistic community. There is the same astonishment each time he plays, his charisma, his enthusiasm and his lyricism leave the audience deeply moved. After more than a hundred solo concerts around the world, Yaron recorded his first album as a trio A Time for Everything along with Matt Brewer and Gerald Cleaver, a subtle blend of jazz, pop and his own personal compositions. In 2008, the trio toured Europe, the United States and Brazil with impressive results.
In September 2008, Yaron won the award for best new instrumentalist of the year at the Victoires du Jazz. The trio returned to the recording studio after having done more than a hundred concerts together. This time they have invited a string quartet the Quatuor Ebène, sensational new artists from the world of classical music, to play on their album Muse, in March 2009.
Yaron has released 2 albums on the ACT label, the widely acclaimed Follow the White Rabbit in 2010 and the more recent Alter ego featuring Emile Parisien in 2012. Both demonstrated Yaron’s virtuosity and evolution for both developing his personal composition to new heights but also his way of mixing influences from his native Israeli roots to pop music in a unique way.
His most recent outing Everyday features his long-time friend Ziv Ravitz, a wonderful and inspiring drummer, who is familiar with the Brno audience as a member of pianist Shai Maestro´s Trio. Together they team up for a fresh music which a well-known critic John Fordham describes as a “fast-moving slideshow of contemporary styles”.
