Jazz Q - Rituál (2023)

After a two-year hiatus, the Jazz Q group is releasing another album, the 24th in a row, RITUÁL, following the ZNOVU, TALISMAN and AMULET series from earlier years, on the Studio Budíkov label. The christening of the new CD will take place at Písecká brána in Dejvice on February 15. Martin Kratochvíl's Jazz Q band has been one of the cult bands on the Czech and European music scene since its foundation in 1967. From its jazz beginnings, around 1972, with the arrival of the English singer Joan Duggan, it switched to a significantly more rock genre. For several years, perhaps thanks to her politically immune name, she also represented the purely rock scene at a time when massive purges and bans affected famous Czech rock formations. Jazz Q will soon celebrate 55 years of his long musical life. The band toured all over the world, won many festivals and released dozens of now cult albums, some of which (Elegie from 1977) received significant recognition from the English press as the eighth most influential album of the last century.
It also seems that the instrumental concert quartet playing full-blooded jazz rock is perhaps the only one in Europe today focusing on this genre. Fusion, i.e. another name for jazz-rock synthesis, which the band started years ago in the Czech Republic, returns to the center of attention of more receptive listeners.