6th Annual Bohemia Jazz Festival

The Bohemia Jazz Festival is god's gift to jazz lovers.

Each summer, the festival brings together internationally acclaimed jazz stars and various groups from the European jazz scene with a taste for the eccentric. Each of the festival's eight evenings are set in picturesque squares in numerous cities across the country, and unlike other high-quality summer jazz festivals in Europe, all the concerts are free. But for Rudy Linka, the organizer of the festival, now in its sixth year, making the music happen requires massive effort on a minuscule budget.

"My head is just spinning with all of the problems unsolved," the Czech jazz guitarist, based in New York City, tells The Prague Post. "Maybe some things will still be unresolved by the first night, but we're still doing it."

Pianist and composer McCoy Tyner with his quartet featuring saxophonist Gary Bartz will open festivities on Old Town Square. Tyner has been an influential figure in modern jazz since the early 1960s, when he played on My Favorite Things with the John Coltrane Quartet. Their collaboration culminated on A Love Supreme, considered Coltrane's greatest recording, and a pioneering merger of hard bop and free jazz.

Bartz began to turn heads in the early 1970s with his Ntu Troop, featuring bassist Ron Carter. The group played deeply grooving jazz spiced with a positive black-pride message. In 2005, Tyner and Bartz earned a Grammy together for their recording Illuminations.

Earlier this year, Tyner and his quartet - featuring Bartz as well as the sensational Cuban drummer Francisco Mela and Gerald Cannon on contrabass - performed at Prague Castle. Their early return to Prague is a sign of the special allure that Bohemia Jazz Fest has for the musical elite. Tyner will also be the recipient of this year's Bohemia Jazz Award.

Festival headliners Terje Rypdal, Palle Mikkelborg and the Bergen Big Band from Norway will perform on the second festival evening in Prague. This group matches the significance of the Tyner quartet for European audiences. Rypdal is a Norwegian free-jazz guitarist and composer closely connected to ECM Records, while Mikkelborg is a Danish trumpeter with a lighter and sublime touch that recalls the modal sound of Mile Davis' Kind of Blue.

Mikkelborg and Rypdal studied with jazz pianist, composer and theorist George Russell when he lived in Scandinavia in the late 1960s. Russell literally wrote the book on modal jazz theory in the mid-1940s, which would come to heavily influence Coltrane and Davis. In Europe, Russell played with saxophonist Jan Gabarek as well as Rypdall and Mikkelborg when they were young musicians, years before they gained international acclaim.

This year's festival puts the spotlight on Scandinavia, and particularly Norway, with the Norwegian jazz diva Inger Marie Gunderson and Rypdal, whom Linka - who emigrated in the 1970s - calls "the Norweigian Jimi Hendrix."

"Scandinavia always has a big place in the festival, first of all because I am a Swedish citizen," Linka, says. "But also it is a place that has made a special contribution to jazz from Europe. Scandinavia has something very unique; it stands on its own. It's very spiritual."

The Panamanian drummer Danilo Perez and his trio headline the Plzeň portion of the festival, while guitarist John Scofield with drummer Bill Stewart and pianist Mulgrew Miller will headline Brno.

Bohemia Jazz Festival always has at least one young and unknown group who shakes up the more traditional jazz fans in the audience. The Ploctones from Holland should fill that role this year, according to Linka. The festival closes in České Budějovice with The Ploctones and another surprise: the legendary Trilok Gurtu.

"I think this year The Ploctones will be the band that will come back to tour with lots of new fans ready and waiting for them," Linka says. "[Gurtu] is someone I saw 25 years ago in Oregon; he was sitting on the floor playing tables and all these little instruments, but it sounded like jazz drumming, like Billy Higgins. He is the ultimate fusion musician, in the good sense, and he will be performing solo."

This year's Bohemian Jazz Fest has perhaps the widest-ranging program to date. Linka sums up the atmosphere that is sure to be present in each of the cities where the festival touches down, saying, "This will be such a fun event."

Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com