Eugen Cicero- Bucharest 1994

Eugen Cicero - critics reverently called him the man with the "golden hands". Over 40 years, his name stood for pianistic virtuosity, phenomenal sense of rhythm and imaginative ingenuity. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, he discovered swing as an authoritative source of inspiration, and in the sixties, on a tour in Berlin, he personally immersed himself in the vibrant European jazz scene for the first time. After this key experience, Cicero developed his personal, unmistakable style, the so- called classic swing, by means of which he was able to cast mainstream jazz and classical music into a new harmonic form. He masterfully connected works from the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods with sophisticated harmonic sequences from jazz and an infectious rhythm - no one who had attempted such symbioses before him achieved a similarly inspired and technically accomplished result. It is astonishing that both, followers of the jazz camp and representatives of classical european musi