CD Reviews:

JAZZ AT PRAGUE CASTLE
Merging - Variations
Milan Svoboda Quartet
 (CD Multisonic 2005 - 31 0657-2 531)


For listeners acquainted with the Czech jazz scene, Milan Svoboda (born 1951) needs no introduction. He entered it in 1974 with his Prague Big Band and since that time he has been its active member, leading further big bands and small groups. But his Concert at Prague Castle, introduced by the President of Czech Republic Václav Klaus (a jazz fan of long standing) presents not only his new, on CDs not yet recorded, Quratet, but also Svoboda´s new composer´s handcraft.
Svoboda went through the classic music education at Prague Conservatory and Music Academy and more extended forms were always close to him. His composition Merging was first performed at Rudolfinum, the seat of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, at a concert celebrate his 50th birthday. It has the classical form of theme with variations, at its premiere performed by three successively introduced jazz pianists. In this recording, it is a suite of five variations for jazz quartet with two intermezzos: the first of a free music making character, up to now rare in Svoboda´s music, and the second with a freely flowing melody of the bass guitar before the last variation with the theme sets on.
A 37 minutes space of improvised music, governed by a composer´s plan, up to now the longest in Svoboda´s recorded outset, is mastered with a bravado. His new Quartet sounds as a wholly integrated group: the sax has a manly tone and expression, bass guitar is always present also as a melodic voice, and the drums, with an ever changing way of playing, permute the sound of the group in a way which suits Svoboda´s author´s intentions.
As a calming supplement to this exciting performance we hear Svoboda´s arrangement of Czech lyrical carol How Beautiful You Are, Innocent Baby. In this piece the quartet is augmented by Jiri Barta, a classical violoncellist, Svoboda´s partner on other projects, where the contacts with European classical music come more to the foreground. Here it serves only as a tender striking endearment after the manly ride of Svoboda´s Quartet.
The members of the Svoboda Quartet are considerably younger than their leader: you might almost say they belong to his pupils. The senior in the group is the drummer Ivan Audes. In spite of the constantly changing texture, his playing never sound as we hear it on these recordings. The bass guitar player Filip Spaleny plays also in his father´s ASPM group and leads his own group Los Quemados. The tenor and soprano Milan Krajic started at the end of the eighties in Contraband, a big band which Svoboda founded with his pupils at a jazz summer clinic. Today, Krajic is the director of the Carlsbad Jazz Festival and leads also his own ensemble. Svoboda estimates him as an individual soloist who does not copy anyone and keeps his own profile.
In its mastering of an almost 40minutes space the Svoboda Quartet does not experiment with out-of-jazz freaks, but it does not with a mere repetition of something well known and many times repeated. We could say theirs is a solid every day work for jazz of the 21st century.

Lubomir Doruzka (2006)