Impact of Freedom on Music
Piano Guild Notes, June 1991
The Impact of Freedom on Music in the Czech Republic
In May 1991, I was invited to perform and tour with the Zilina Chamber Orchestra from Zilina Czech Republic. As one of the first American artists to perform in East Europe since the Revolution in late 1989, I felt it a great honor and wrote a piece titled Heritage Suite, dedicated to the people of the Czech Republic.
It is about the Russian occupation in August 1968, and the move toward freedom in late 1989. The management of the Zilina Orchestra first heard of me in March 1990, when they read an article in a Czech music magazine reviewing my scale chord dictionary, The Source, which had recently become available in Czech. Pianist Emil Viklicky, who reviewed the Source, came to the US in May 1990 to perform with me in concert called East Meets West. Our concert here was so successful that he took word of it back to the orchestra in the Czech Republic. I was then invited to tour with the Zilina Orchestra in May 1991. Having never performed in East Europe before I took with me many preconceived ideas of what to expect. Some were true…..some were not. As a performer/pianist, I was especially excited about this trip, because I had the opportunity to perform in 2 different genres of music; classical and jazz. I composed jazz music for my quartet, and also arranged it for full orchestra. Many of my compositions are also very classical in nature. So working with an orchestra gives me the ability to perform in both genres. Musicians are struggling with their own set of problems with the move toward freedom and capitalism in the Czech Republic. Some of the problems of Classical and Jazz musicians are the same, and some are not. In this article I will touch on my impressions of what a few of these problems are for the classical and jazz musicians in the Czech republic.
During the communist rule, jazz clubs became a place to get the news that couldn’t be heard out on the street. Jazz clubs also offered the music, which became a symbol of the freedom missing in their lives. One of the pre-conceived notions that I carried with me was that all jazz musicians would feel that the new freedom would be great for jazz music. Oddly enough, this wasn’t exactly true, as I’ll explain a little later. A free market economy has caused its’ own set of problems for both jazz and classical concert goers. For example, during the communist rule, if you wanted to hear live jazz, the safest bet was to go to someone’s apartment to listen to musicians perform. When there was jazz in the clubs, the economy was in such ruin that one could get into the club for practically nothing. Some Czech jazz musicians even set their watches to New York time in order to be different and “act out” against the attitudes of the communist party. My friend Emil told me of a time several military guards approached him, as he was about to go on stage and perform. The Guards forced him up against the wall and told him what compositions he must play and he was ordered to send his band home and perform solo.
If he didn’t obey, he faced the possibility of prison or not being allowed to perform for many years. Today jazz is performed out in the open, but with the economy moving toward capitalism so rapidly, the economy is still, to put it gently – a mess. Because of this, Czechs cannot afford the ticket price of a concert, whether it’s the fee to get in to a jazz club or the ticket price of a classical concert. The folks who are buying the tickets for concerts are from west Europe, and tourists on holiday from countries where their dollar in strong in East Europe. There are some jazz musicians who feel that jazz music is losing some of its “edge” because it is no longer suppressed. This is what I call the “you have the live the blues in order to play the blues” mentality. Jazz music is an expression of freedom. Now that they have this freedom, it is only natural that the jazz art form will change for them. They see “their jazz” changing and it’s a bit intimidating to some. I have no doubt that once they experience freedom for a while, “their jazz” will grow in ways that could never imagine. I found these attitudes to be among the musicians who have not been able to travel out of the Czech republic and experience what freedom is like.
The jazz musicians who have been able to travel, and perform in countries of freedom, don’t feel at all like Czech jazz is losing its “edge” The well-traveled musicians are not at all intimidated by the changes that are happening in their lives and the jazz art form. Quite the contrary - they welcome it. I think this is a great example of how an art form such as jazz changes because of the attitudes that exist based on an artist’s experience and/or lack of it.
Orchestras are experiencing their own nightmare. For example, the Statny Komorny Orchester Zilina (state harmony orchestra of Zilina) is exactly what its name suggests: an orchestra funded by the state. Now that the communist party is out of power, the necessary funds to keep the orchestra alive are no longer there. Orchestral management is having to get very creative very quickly in order to sell tickets to pay for all the expenses they haven’t had to be responsible for because the government paid their bills. The manager of the Zilina orchestra is a woman of about 40 years of age. Having been born into a system of oppression, she knows no other way, and for obvious reasons, is quickly trying to hone her skills in understanding the way capitalism works in order for her orchestra to survive. She is hoping the new system of freedom will work, but is still a little skeptical because it is a whole new way of life for her personally as well as professionally. A larger orchestra such as the Prague symphony is a world-class symphony orchestra that has a better chance of surviving because it can derive some of its income from tour concerts, recordings, and other sources. This is a very difficult time for the orchestras and musicians in the Czech Republic. I found that these people have an incredibly strong spirit and I hope no doubt that they have the will to survive on many levels.