Friedrich Gulda

In 1956, Gulda performed and recorded at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival. He organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966, and he established the International Musikforum, a school for students who wanted to learn improvisation, in Ossiach, Austria, in 1968. From the 1950s on Gulda cultivated a professional interest in jazz, writing songs and free improvisation or open music improvisations. He also recorded as a vocalist under the pseudonym "Albert Golowin", fooling music critics for years until it was realized that Gulda and Golowin were the same person. He played instrumental pieces, at times combining jazz, free music, and classical music in his concerts. He once said: There can be no guarantee that I will become a great jazz musician, but at least I shall know that I am doing the right thing. I don't want to fall into the routine of the modern concert pianist's life, nor do I want to ride the cheap triumphs of the Baroque bandwagon. In jazz, he found "the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught." He also took up playing the baritone saxophone. In addition, Gulda composed "Variations on The Doors' 'Light My Fire'" (aka 'Variationen über "Light My Fire" (von Jim Morrison)') for solo piano, and released it in 1971 on Track 11 (LP disc 1, side 2, track 1) of "The Long Road To Freedom (Ein musikalisches Selbstporträt in Form eines Lehrgangs)". An earlier instrumental rock-style piano/bass/drums trio version (sans any of the complex Gulda composed and improvised variations...) of 'Light My Fire' can also be found on Gulda's album As You Like It (1970), an album that also includes standards such as "'Round Midnight" and "What Is This Thing Called Love?", as well as Gulda's classic "Blues For H.G. (dedicated to Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer)." From the late 1960s through the 1980s – while continuing his straight-ahead swing and bop-based jazz (often in European Jazz big bands, which he often organized yearly) performances and recordings, and his classical performances and recordings, he also performed and/or recorded (often using a custom electrically amplified clavichord, percussion instruments, and a bass recorder wooden flute) with a wide range of musicians involved in Free improvisation, including: Cecil Taylor, Barre Phillips, Ursula Anders, John Surman, Albert Mangelsdorff, Stu Martin, and Fritz Pauer. Gulda spoke of a fascination with the boundaries in music, believing all music to have worth, regardless of how society judged it. He believed experiments in what he called 'free music' were wonderful musical experiences, even if nobody else believed it was music. One such experiment was a performance in which he and Ursula Anders would both improvise whilst nude and shouting about being mad. In 1980, he wrote his Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra, which has been called "as moving as it is lighthearted", in five movements "involving jazz, a minuet, rock, a smidgen of polka, a march and a cadenza with two spots where a star cellist must improvise." He composed a piano concerto with jazz features, Concerto for Myself, that he premiered in Munich in 1988. In 1982, Gulda teamed up with jazz pianist Chick Corea, who was 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 ("Some Day My Prince Will Come" and the lesser known, adapted by Miles Davis song "Put Your Foot Out") and classical music (Brahms' "Wiegenlied" Cradle song). Gulda and Corea continued their musical relationship and recorded Mozart's Double Piano Concerto with the Concertgebouw Orchestra with Nikolaus Harnoncourt (conductor). They also played jazz piano duets of Gulda's "Fantasy For Two Pianos" and Corea's "Ping Pong For Two Pianos". In the late 1980s and 1990s, organist/MIDI keyboardist Barbara Dennerlein also studied with and performed with Gulda. These unorthodox practices along with refusing to follow clothing conventions (he was notoriously described as resembling, in one South German concert, "a Serbian pimp") or announce the program of his concerts in advance, earned him the nickname "terrorist pianist". In 1988, he cancelled a performance after officials of the Salzburg Festival objected to his including jazz musician Joe Zawinul on the program. When the Vienna Music Academy awarded him its Beethoven Ring in recognition of his performances, he accepted it but then later reconsidered and returned it. To promote a concert in 1999, he announced his own death in a press release so that the concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus could serve as a resurrection party.

1959: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art 1989: Honorary Ring of Vienna