Ondřej Pivec

Ondřej Pivec

Genres: jazz, organ, Czech

Similar artists via Last.fm

Beata Hlavenková J.A.R. Ondrej Pivec Organic Quartet Dan Bárta Rudy Linka

About Ondřej Pivec

Ondřej Pivec was born in 1984 in Brno, where he completed the seven year elementary music school curriculum in classical piano. In 1999 he moved to Prague and applied to the Summer Jazz Workshop, where he encountered jazz music under the tutelage of NajPonk, Kuba Stankiewicz, Michał Tokaj, Pavel Włosok and others. He was so taken with jazz that he attended another two summer workshops and put together his first quintet, Mantis, one year later. His first more significant engagement came in 2002 with Roman Pokorný and his band, thanks to which Pivec began to reorient himself from piano to that legendary keyboard instrument, the Hammond organ, on which he also plays the bass lines with his left hand. At the same time he started to work together with the singer Yvonne Sanchez in her Brazilian Groove project, and in the year 2004 alone, he managed to play around 130 concerts with these two bands in Prague, throughout the Czech Republic and abroad. In 2004 he also met the Italian organ virtuoso Alberto Marsico, taking a number of lessons from him. In 2005 Pivec left the Roman Pokorný Band to go his own way, founding Organic Quartet with his classmates from the Post-Secondary School of the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory (guitarist Libor Šmoldas, saxophonist Jakub Doležal and drummer Tomáš Hobzek). He also started to work periodically with German guitarist Christian Rover. 2005 was also the year that Pivec won the Soloist of the Year award at the Philips International Jazz Festival, while Organic Quartet was Band of the Year at the same event. In 2006 Organic Quartet released their debut album, Don’t Get Ideas, which was very well received by critics both at home and abroad, winning the 2006 Best Jazz/Blues Album award of the Academy of Popular Music. Pivec was voted Organist of the Month by the International Archive of Jazz Organists in October 2006. Organic’s second album Never Enough was released in May, 2007. That summer, Pivec spent nearly a quarter of a year in New York learning from his idol, Israeli organist Sam Yahel, playing at concerts and jam sessions, and unexpectedly recording the album Overseason with major local musicians and his colleague Tomáš Hobzek. In 2007 Pivec also dedicated himself full-time to playing bass lines on the pedalboard and working in the studio with the band Navigators on their debut album Skytravellin’. Pivec is currently working with leading Czech violinist Gabriela Demeterová and her Collegium on a project combining elements of jazz and serious music. Pivec has performed on many concert stages throughout the world, including Dresden’s Semperoper, Blue Note Germany, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Paris’ Club St. Germain, Berlin’s Kunstfabrik, Vienna’s ORF Radiokulturhaus and Warsaw’s Alchemia Club. He has also played a tour of Turkey opening for ace drummer Billy Cobham’s ensemble Culture Mix, a tour of Romania with Yvonne Sanchez and with Organic Quartet, the Jyvaskyla Jazz Festival in Finland, and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in England. Today Pivec is one of the most distinctive musicians on the Czech jazz and fusion scene. More information about him can be found at www.ondrejpivec.com.

Taken from Last.fm

293 listeners  ·  2,722 plays via Last.fm