Dear friends, I hope you’re well and all my best wishes for the new year: health, love, happiness and lot of music! It’s my pleasure to release a fun jazzy video on a music by Friedrich Gulda from his study book called « Play piano play », this is the study N°6 Presto possibile.
Born in 1930, Gulda is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding piano players of the 20th century. Although most famous for his Beethoven interpretations, he also performed the music of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Ravel. His piano students included Martha Argerich who called him "my most important influence," and the conductor Claudio Abbado. From the 1950's on he cultivated an interest in jazz, writing several songs and instrumental pieces himself and combining jazz and classical music in his concerts at times. In 1982, Gulda teamed up with jazz pianist Chick Corea, who found himself in between the breakup of Return to Forever and the formation of his Elektric Band. Issued on The Meeting (Philips, 1984), Gulda and Corea communicate in lengthy improvisations mixing jazz (Someday My Prince Will Come and the lesser known Miles Davis song Put Your Foot Out) and classical music (Brahms' Wiegenlied).
For this video, I teamed up with my old friend Gabriel Benlolo @gabwiwel on the drums (we met 25 years ago in High School😱) who is also my colleague in the @philharmoniquederadiofrance. As this drum part doesn’t exist in the original piano version, I hope you’ll find it’s a nice addition 😇
I also enjoyed playing the new BC XXI by Buffet, just an amazing horn, among some Légende, Festival and Tosca Bass with my usual Vandoren BD4.
Hope you’ll like it and don’t hesitate to give me ideas!
Take care and stay safe! ❤️
