Robert Balzar Trio Matej Benko Quintet

The Robert Balzar Trio has been talked about for many years as one of the finest home jazz bands. This is despite the fact that the only member who runs through its entire history is the one who gave the trio its name. While the Robert Balzar Trio’s music has certainly changed over time, depending on its members, the foundation around which everything revolves remains the same.

Double bassist and bassist Robert Balzar, a very prominent follower of the so-called Czech double bass school, has been on the Czech music scene since the second half of the 1980s. He has never been a strict and dogmatic follower of one musical style. He has accompanied pop singers, formed the backbone of chansonnier Hana Hegerova’s backing band for over twenty years, has been a member of the funk band J.A.R. since 1998 and co-founded the great fusion project Illustratosphere with Dan Bárta in 2000.

For Robert Balzar, however, jazz is the most intimate genre in which he devotes himself. Throughout his career he has had the honour of backing such luminaries as Kurt Elling, John Abercrombie, Raul Midon, Benny Golson, Arturo Sandoval and others. He founded the Robert Balzar Trio in 1996, toured halfway around the world with it (USA, UK, Turkey, Sweden, Hungary, Cyprus, Israel, etc.) and recorded nine albums. The last one was released at the very end of last year under the title Conversation. Most of the trio’s repertoire consists of their own compositions or arrangements of not only jazz standards. The trio’s side project is devoted to these, working in collaboration with Dan Bárta, who reveals his improvisational and jazz skills even more than in Illustratosphere.

In addition to the bandleader, the current members of the Robert Balzar Trio are pianist Vít Křišt’an and drummer Kamil Slezák, both extremely experienced musicians with extensive international musical training and a large portfolio of contemporary musical engagements.

Line-up:

Vít Křišťan – piano, Robert Balzar – double bass, Kamil Slezák – drums

The scope of pianist and composer Matej Benek’s work is extremely broad, not only in the field of jazz. Even in his quintet, he has gathered musicians who like to cross borders, but basically belong to the top of domestic jazz.

Now forty-four years old, the musician originally from Slovakia has put down roots in Prague for a long time, and his first major work that made him known in a big way was the thematic song album Planety in 2015, which featured guest appearances by such stars as Richard Müller, Dan Bárta and Michael Kocáb. Matej Benko has collaborated as a studio or concert musician with such disparate greats as the band Mig 21 or the singer-songwriter Xavier Baumaxa, but he has also been a regular participant in the projects of the lyricist and producer Michal Horáček and some of the singers whose repertoire he co-created. A very well-received borderline project, albeit mostly falling into the jazz category, was the collaboration of the Matej Benko Quintet with singer Ondřej Ruml, in which they gave an up-to-date jazz face to the songs of Jaroslav Ježek, Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich through album recordings and concerts.