Lukáš Oravec Orchestra An international line-up, popular with listeners and confirmed by music publicists as world-class. This is the Lukáš Oravec Orchestra, the big band of Slovak trumpeter and composer Lukáš Oravec, who won the prestigious Radio_Head Award for the best jazz album of the year for his debut album Light of Blue. Before founding his own big band, Lukáš Oravec had already built a strong reputation not only on the Czech-Slovak, but also on the European scene. He attracted attention with his own quintet, into which he invited world-renowned guests, including pianists Aaron Goldberg and Danny Grisett and saxophonists Bob Mintzer and Wayne Escoffery. He has also gained experience in renowned big bands such as Gustav Brom’s Radio Big Band, Matúš Jakabčic Big Band and the Danish RAMA Big Band. American saxophonist Bob Mintzer said this about him, “Lukáš Oravec is a great young trumpeter who plays and composes with great passion and creativity. His music has a distinctive sound, as does his playing. He and the musicians he surrounds himself with are a force to be reckoned with. I think you will enjoy his beautiful music on recordings as much as listening to the band live in concert.” Lukáš Oravec Orchestra was founded in 2018. “I had the idea of starting my own orchestra somewhere in my subconscious for a long time, but there was never a situation where I had enough players around me at a level that would satisfy me. However, one day in Brno I realized that thanks to the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts I already had such musicians around me,” says the bandleader looking back at the creation of the band. So, what was the result of this Oravec’s insight? A modern European big band, whose work has been described by publicist Jan Hocek as “music full of colour, brisk, with condensed and florid scales, inventively phrased, full of variable dynamics, expressiveness and solidity of matter, and often haunting solos, even in ballads.” The fourteen-member group features leading musicians from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary and the USA. The bandleader himself makes a significant contribution to the repertoire, and double bassist Pavel Klimashevski is also an important figure in the big band, taking on the position of conductor. However, almost all members of the orchestra enrich the orchestra’s repertoire with their compositions. The success of the first album did not lull the band into a false sense of security, quite the opposite. The band’s repertoire grew with another series of original compositions, which were released in 2023 on the Latin-styled album entitled The Sun. The sound of the album was enriched by American percussionist Sammy Figueroa, who has worked with Miles Davis, David Bowie, as well as pop queens Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.

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