Emil Viklický

Emil Viklický is a prominent Czech jazz pianist and composer. When Viklický studied numerical mathematics at the UP Faculty of Science, he was already fully immersed in music. Before he started his professional career as a jazz musician, he founded his own quartet Musica Magica, then the Jazz Sextet of Emil Viklický. He was also hired by the “Bigband” of Věroslav Mlčák, where he gained swing and big band music experience by playing at dancing lessons and balls. During his military service he played in the military art ensemble Pavel Bayerle’s orchestra, and in the early years of his professional career in various groups, for example in Karel Velebný’s SHQ. Since jazz, along with other free-minded artistic expressions, was rather suppressed in the Czechoslovakia of the time, these experiences of his were crucial for the development of Czech jazz. The jazz rock band Energit, later called Energit of Luboš Andršt, also played a formative role in Viklický’s career. It was in this group that Emil Viklický fully emerged as a distinctive soloist and composer.

In 1976, when he succeeded in the International Jazz Piano Competition in Lyon, and then in a composition competition in Monaco, he was offered a scholarship to Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music. Before he left for the USA, however, he released his album V Holomóci městě [In the Town of Olomouc]. It won the 1979 Supraphon Prize and was hailed as “emphatic”, “original”, and “exciting”.

Viklický’s intensive artistic activities, as well as many years of cooperation with outstanding jazz musicians in the Czech Republic and abroad, have borne copious fruit – not only in the form of albums, but also in respect for Emil Viklický as a personality. Although he received his musical education while studying jazz at Berklee College in the United States, he never forgot that he had studied at the UP Faculty of Science and was always proud of his alma mater. During his half-century-long career, he has made the Czech Republic and Palacký University famous perhaps on all continents.