contacts: Jakub Cervenka, bandleader, phone: 737 926 536, e-mail: bluetrain@seznam.cz
Big Band ZUS Isi Krejciho (for our English version mentioned as Big Band ZUS-IK) was established in 2007 and soon became the leading swing orchestra in Olomouc Region. It's a full jazz orchestra with 5 saxophones, 8 brass and 4 pieces acoustic rhythm section, formed with the students, teachers and jazz enthusiasts both amateurs and professionals.
The major season's event - a tour to Lucerne, Switzerland - took it's place on Dec.2.-4., 2011 and was really successful. We represented our school, city of Olomouc and Olomouc region well and the musical and social levels were really high. This tour also meant that we repaid the visit to our Swiss friends (Lucerne Jazz Orchestra), who were in Olomouc in 2009. Two of their members - David Grottschreiber and Lukas Frei organized a workshop for our band in Lucerne, which brought so much inspiration and new knoledge to our musicians - many thanks to both of you for spending your time with us! Our orchestra played at the event of Open Source Kulturfestival, then we supported our Swiss colleagues from Big Band
Hochschule Luzern. We thank to the following subjects and persons for their support: City of Lucerne - Claudia Willi, City of Olomouc - Sona Horka, Olomouc Region, SOL (organizing, Swiss student organization with Frederic Haner and his team), Tereza Maskova (superb organizing, translation) and Olbus Service (transportation). Our stay in Lucerne also included the sightseeing, because one can't see so beautiful historic city every day and we were also honored to see the KKL, Lucerne's spectacular cultural center building at the end of our visit.
Some pictures, videos a audio tracks are available.
We performed at Jazz in Hall festival in Zabreh na Morave on Saturday October 8th. It felt so great to play there and our thanks belong to Zabrezska Kulturni, s.r.o., Moravia Big Band Zabreh and to the sound engineer as well.
We had an orchestra workshop from Aug.29 to Sep.2 - we took care of our preparation for the upcoming season for 5 evenings. We also organized jazz harmony lessons every night - they were surprisively well attended by our musicians. Many thanks to our friends for finding a bass player - Pavel Jurecka now joins the band! Now we're looking for some good trumpet and trombone players too. We also established our own manager team so there will be no more difficulty to find some gigs for the band.
More about upcoming events can be found on our live performances page.
The rhythm section of Big Band ZUS-IK holds one nice priority - because the music of the Count Basie Orchestra forms the main part of our repertoire, we use an acoustic bass and additionally we have Jirka Krbecek, who is the first Czech guitarist using Freddie Green's unique rhythm guitar style. And now we also have another Freddie Green guy, Jakub Vavra, and they both share orchestra's repertoire. They use large acoustic archtop guitars with no pick-ups. Jakub Vavra plays school's semi-plywood 18" instrument Prochazka, Historic model, Jirka Krbi purchased solid wood 17" guitar Kucera, Julia model. More about Freddie Green rhythm guitar style - click the following link.
Our special page dedicated to the legendary Freddie Green!!!
We are glad to see some new musicians, but at this time we are looking for experienced players only. There is no time to teach all the basics during orchestra rehearsals. For those of you with less experience we can manage some private or school lessons first. At this time we are looking especially for strong trumpet and trombone players. In any case don't hesitate to contact us, we do speak English. We rehearse every thursday from 6:30 till 8:30PM in our rehearse-room, Jilova 43a, Olomouc: Click here for a map!
We offer much more than just the possibility of playing with the big band. Our goal is to educate fully prepared players, that means we will give you some individual lessons focused on better tone, phrasing, theory, improvisation and other jazz specialties. We will also suggest what to listen to, which helps rapidly to develop one's abilities in jazz. We are looking forward to see you - please use our contacts below.
Jakub Cervenka, mobile: 737 926 536, e-mail: bluetrain@seznam.cz
Mgr.Jan Pribil, mobile: 723 740 219, e-mail: jpribil@centrum.cz
Support this website and my musical activities using PayPal:
