Rudy Linka was voted one of the best guitarists in the world by the readers of the prestigious Down Beat Magazine. He recorded around 14 CDs for Enja, Timeless, Universal or Sony BMG labels, on which he played together with people like Paul Motian, Larry Grenadier, John Scofield and many others. Bobo Stenson effectively defined the term "modern piano" already in the late 1960s. He is one of the founders of the "ECM sound" and has performed with legends such as Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and Gary Burton and many others.
Rudy Linka was born on May 29, 1960 in Prague and fell in love with jazz as a teenager. At that time, he borrowed albums from other jazz lovers and even from the American embassy in Prague. In 1979, he graduated in classical guitar at the Prague Conservatory, and in the early 1980s he emigrated to Sweden, where he studied composition at the Stockholm Music Institute for four years. He acquired Swedish citizenship and also met American bassist Red Mitchell there and started working with him. He also later recommended Linka for a Jim Hall Fellowship at Boston's Berklee College of Music. He continued his studies at The New School in New York, where he moved in 1986. He then studied privately with John Scofield, Jim Hall or John Abercrombie! He himself has been teaching guitar since the revolutionary year of 1989.
