The Blues of a String Hanging in the Wind

The new album of double bassist and composer Jaromír Honzák is a live recording of an eight-part suite for jazz quintet and orchestra performed by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and Honzák's all-stars Czech jazz quintet, composed of David Dorůžka (guitar), Luboš Soukup (saxophone, clarinet), Vít Křišťan (piano, rhodes), Martin Novák (drums, percussion). The suite was performed within the concert series of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra "New Horizons" which combines jazz and symphonic music. The suite entitled "Blues of a String Hanging in the Wind" was written by Jaromír Honzák and based on the composition of the same name, which he created back in 2008 for a string and jazz quartet on the occasion of a special Jazz concert at the Rudolfinum. A year later, it appeared on Honzák's studio album "Little Things" (Animal Music, 2009). Tomáš Sýkora, pianist, composer, arranger and curator of the New Horizons programme, was in charge of the arrangements for the orchestra. Jaromír Honzák says about the piece: "I have never been drawn to a large cast in music before, I have always been a type of chamber musician. So here I said to myself that I will try to think as 'chamberly' as possible when working for a symphony orchestra. As usual, I first decided to learn from listening to similar works, or even to study some scores, but in the end my usual routine prevailed, based rather on my intuition. Our subsequent cooperation with Tomáš was very efficient and pleasant. Tomáš was great not only as an unusually skilled and fast orchestrator, but also as an empathetic and helpful assistant." Jaromír Honzák gave the individual parts suitable names that are meant to help the listeners grasp the music. The atmosphere and storytelling of the album, which arises when listening to the music, is also evoked by the artwork of the Japanese artist Kotone Utsunomiya, which she created specifically for this album. The author of the graphic design is Andrea Vacovská from Studio Najbrt.