Tribute to late Czech swing and jazz queen Eva Pilarová
The late Eva Pilarová, one of the legends on the Czech music scene, would have turned 85 this weekend. In the course of her impressive career she sang swing, jazz, rock’n’roll, middle of the road pop and even funk and folk music.
Born in August 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, Eva Pilarová was already an eager singer during her childhood and went on to study at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in her hometown of Brno. She stood out thanks to her very specific soprano voice in the range of three and a half octaves.
Although she studied opera singing, it was swing and jazz that most interested her. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong were her idols. That she was a serious talent in the latter genre became apparent in 1962, when she won the Gold medal in jazz singing at the World Youth Festival in Helsinki.
Her fame grew fast and Pilarová won her first Golden Nightingale, the annual award handed to singers voted most popular by the public, in 1963.
A year later, she received a role in what would become one of Czechoslovakia’s most famous film musicals – If a Thousand Clarinets (Kdyby tisíc klarinetů). She sang a duet with Karel Gott called “It is Dangerous to Touch the Stars” (Je nebezpečné dotýkat se hvězd) .
Further Golden Nightingale awards followed in 1964, 1967 and 1971.
Her famous songs include Requiem, Night and Day, and Oliver Twist.
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