Duo Hrubý Viklický

Emil Viklicky (piano)/ Pavel Hruby (bass clarinet)

Duo of Czech jazz legend, pianist and composer Emil Viklický with renowned bass clarinet player Pavel Hrubý.

Although Emil Viklický and Pavel Hrubý have been meeting in person for a long time, their first musical collaboration took place in 2020, when the two musicians came together for the recording of the chamber-oriented and partly improvised album Between Us in the unusual composition of piano and bass clarinet. After its release and very favourable feedback from music critics, the two musicians decided on a concert version of this duo. In this new project, Czech jazz piano legend Emil Viklický has an intimate dialogue with Pavel Hruby, a renowned wind instrument player a generation younger. He uses the full sound palette of the bass clarinet in his musical interpretations and incorporates elements of jazz, blues, classical music and Moravian folk traditions into his compositions. In the warm and completely original (co)sound that both musicians create, one can feel a certain perfection and tension that makes their performances a musical gem.

The musical personality of Emil Viklicky (*1948) synthesizes jazz history from the styles of early jazz to modern jazz on the border with artistic music. This includes echoes of Moravian music as well as free jazz. Viklický has collaborated with jazz luminaries such as Bill Frisell, George Mraz, Miroslav Vitouš, Karel Velebný and Eric Marienthal. In addition to a number of jazz projects, his efforts to fuse Moravian folklore with jazz are significant, for which he has collaborated with Zuzana Lapčíková, Iva Bittová and Jiří Pavlica, the leader of the band Hradištěan. Viklicky's compositional activity also extends to the field of film and artistic music. He is the author of three operas and a number of compositions for film and television.

Pavel Hrubý, a saxophonist and bass clarinetist a generation younger, is currently one of the most prominent jazz instrumentalists. He is known, for example, from the jazz group Limbo or the trio Tellemarkk. In 2021 he released his solo album Go Between, on which he presents himself as a lover of improvised music and a virtuoso on various types of saxophones and clarinets.

The event is realized with the financial support of the town of Mariánské Lázně.