The Story of Jazz - Fabulous High Flights - Chapter 2

Chapter 1: All Blues

The blues not only represents one of the most fundamental and important elements of jazz, but it has also developed an unexpected diversity within it. From its slow original form with the famous 12 bars and just three chords, blues has emerged in 8 and 16 bars, with complex chord structures, extravagant melodic lines, at every tempo, and in different time signatures than the original 4/4 time.

While THE STORY OF JAZZ started 10 years ago with "Basically The Blues," the beginning of the second decade will now feature All Blues. Well, it can't truly be All Blues, but Kurt Prohaska & Friends (piano, bass, drums & some more) should succeed in tracing the soaring heights of the blues: from the stomping "Saint Louis Blues," which originated in the southern USA in 1914, through the light-footed blues of the Swing Era, the multidimensional blues structures of bebop, the more linear playing style of blues in hard bop, the transcendental expression of the Coltrane generation, all the way to the masterpiece All Blues by Miles Davis.

Chapter 2: The Other Blues

In the 1960s, with the advent of modal jazz and freely improvised music, the development of jazz—and thus also of blues—seemed to be complete. However, artistic creativity and ingenuity granted the blues in jazz a second surge: musicians were able to incorporate everything that had emerged in the first 60 years of jazz history into their compositions and interpretations, developing entirely new recipes and concepts from it. The (film) composer Oliver Nelson, for example, created Blues in Six & Four, while the influential guitarist Wes Montgomery produced a Twisted Blues. Herbie Hancock fused jazz, blues, rock, and funk, and Antonio Carlos Jobim dressed the blues in Brazilian attire. Last but not least, the ever-curious pianist, composer, and arranger Hank Jones demonstrated what The Other Blues could encompass.

The Kurt Prohaska Trio (piano, bass, drums) invites carefully selected special guests to explore the aforementioned and other rare compositional terrain, such as that of Gary McFarland, Sara Cassey, or Eddie Gomez.

Chapter 3: Bass On Top

The double bass as a melodic instrument? As a solo instrument, yes, to showcase the soloistic abilities of the bass players alongside the accompaniment of the band, but as an instrument that presents the melody of a composition? Well, there have been two outstanding bass personalities in jazz history who did just that: Slam & Mule, whose full names are Slam Stewart and Major Holley. The two uniquely extracted everything from bass playing by plucking (as is common in jazz), but also bowing and singing along.

In the third chapter of the 2025/26 season, Italian star bassist Rosario Bonaccorso and Swedish bass giant Kristian Lind will take Bass On Top in the Kurt Prohaska Trio (piano, bass, drums) and lead the soaring heights of Slam & Mule into new dimensions.

Chapter 4: Play, Fiddle, Play

The violin initially played a subordinate role in jazz, but it was already present in ragtime orchestras and with Ray Nance in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Stuff Smith was among the first to use the violin prominently in his own orchestra. With Joe Venuti and especially Stéphane Grappelli, however, the ascent of this instrument, which is indispensable in classical music, also began in jazz. And this Fabulous High Flight continued in the following generations of violinists with world stars like Svend Asmussen, Didier Lockwood, and Jean-Luc Ponty.

In the fourth and final part of the heights sketched in the 2025/26 season, the Kurt Prohaska Trio (piano, bass, drums) calls upon Klemens Bittmann, the versatile violinist of international stature, to Play, Fiddle, Play, to illustrate the development of the jazz violin from a delicate accompanying instrument to a dominant solo instrument.