Jazz legend Emil Viklický

It has been a good year for Czech jazz legend Emil Viklický, beginning with a Presidential Medal of Merit and ending with the release of two new albums, one in Germany called “Spring Awakening” and another in Japan, where he plays regularly, called Kafka on the Shore, a Tribute to Haruki Murakami. In the first part of a wide-ranging interview with the pianist we began by talking about his English, which he told me he originally picked up from his black fellow musicians in the 1970…

Emil Viklický

“My English was so black, you wouldn’t believe it. Because I’d been playing with these guys for half a year. I lost it a bit later. But I came back in August of ’78, and I met this guy and he couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘Are you faking it? Why are you trying to pretend you speak black English?’ And I said ‘I’m not pretending!’, I was just using the words the musicians used. Obviously it was black English with a Czech accent…”

What’s it like for a Czech jazzman to go to the home of jazz as play with African-Amercian musicians for the very first time?

“It’s an adventure. Because if you grow up in the Czech Republic and you want to play jazz, obviously the country of jazz is the States. So if you have the chance to go there and do it, it’s a marvel. It’s a very nice adventure.”

You went there when you were already thirty though, you’d been playing jazz for years, and so you must have had many expectations.

“Actually I was 28, it was the summer of ’77. But I was a ready musician, at Berkley I learned how to say ‘sharp’ or ‘flat’, and all these musical terms that I didn’t know how to say properly in English, but otherwise I was a ready musician. That was the marketing strategy of Berkley college, to pick up ready musicians and acquire them for the college, because it was a good marketing tool, to show that they had such good musicians. I had already been in Prague for five years, and already had a lot of experience.”…