Anděl Award winner and acclaimed double bassist Jiří Slavík introduces a new international trio. Paul Clarvis, the percussionist of the legendary Abbey Road studio, will be on drums, and Clarvis’ long-time collaborator, the leading English pianist Liam Noble, will be the third. The Noble-Slavík-Clarvis trio released the album Nostalgia on the Bivak Records label of the JazzFestBrno festival, which they will present today at the Cabaret des Péchés club in Brno.
“This purely acoustic record is probably the most jazzy thing I’ve ever done. Noble and Clarvis are true masters of their craft and possess skills that are becoming increasingly rare to see. The up and coming generation doesn’t play like that anymore. But the result is not canned music, quite the opposite. It’s as if you were cooking from Magdalena Dobromila Rettig’s cookbook, but at the same time you couldn’t resist the temptation to spice up the recipe with modern cooking techniques,” says Jiří Slavík.
The title of the album Nostalgia and a glance at the track list suggests that this is a return to the past. Apart from original music, the record features arrangements of George Gershwin and Charles Mingus as well as unexpected cover versions of the world-famous songs It’s a Long Way To Tipperary and Pity Love. While the trio draws deeply on the jazz tradition and playing styles of the past, it creatively transforms them into a contemporary form, pointing to the possible future development of the genre. The Brno concert with the album launch will take place today, 26 March 2023 at 19:30 at Cabaret des Péchés.
The collaborative recordings of the acclaimed Noble-Clarvis duo have had a major influence on Slavík since he first met them as a student at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Noble and Clarvis, who was always Leonard Bernstein’s first choice for his UK tours, play together in various formations and are also very fond of meeting as a duo to sail through the pop, classical, and jazz repertoire together with ease, panache, and grace. Both musicians always manage to play with dynamics and enjoy making music together.
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Jiří Slavík is the author of all arrangements on the album Nostalgia. He studied composition and double bass at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the Conservatory of St. Cecilia in Rome. After his studies he moved to Paris, where he spent seven years as a freelance musician and teacher. After returning to the Czech Republic, he began teaching at the jazz departments of HAMU and JAMU. During his career, he has performed on five continents and his compositions have been broadcast on TV arte, Czech Television, France Culture, BBC Radio 3, and Czech Radio. His album Motherhood won the 2016 Angel Award in the World Music category. The year before last, he released Children and Parents with the band The Survivors on Bivak Records. Recently, he has also attracted attention with his novel musical treatment of Christmas carols with VUS Ondráš on the album Cesta světla.
Nostalgia is released as a CD, the cover of which is decorated, as is customary with Bivak Records, with a photograph by Roman France. It is available not only from Bivak Records, but also from Animal Music and Supraphon, both in physical and digital form. Nostalgia can also be listened to online via Spotify and other streaming services.
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