The club and its years
Reduta Jazz Club: a short history
From the club's 1957 opening through the Communist years and the changes of 1989 to Bill Clinton's saxophone: the history behind a Prague jazz room.
Reserve your seat at Reduta ↗An opening in the late 1950s
Reduta says it opened in 1957, and both its own site and Wikipedia give that year. Wikipedia names the bassist Jan Arnet as its founder and explains the name: a reduta was a place of entertainment and music, linked to the masquerade ball. The club's site adds that since its foundation it has been the main home of jazz in the Czech Republic. A 2012 history of Prague jazz dates the opening to 1958, and the first recorded milestone is a premiere by the ensemble Studio 5 on 2 June 1958, so the late 1950s is the safest way to say it.
Jazz that the regime disliked
Jazz in Czechoslovakia had a bumpy history. It grew from the 1920s and 1930s, when Jaroslav Ježek and Rudolf Antonín Dvorský laid its roots, and it was banned during the Nazi occupation. A revival began in 1947, but Stalinists opposed it at first, and in the 1950s the Communist authorities labelled jazz degenerate and decadent. Wikipedia says Reduta promoted the music throughout that period, and it names the Studio 5 premiere, with Karel Velebný and Luděk Hulan, as an early landmark.
A street of clubs and a festival
The jazz historian Lubomír Dorůžka compared Národní street to New York's 52nd Street, with musicians moving between clubs. The first Prague International Jazz Festival took place in 1964, and Wikipedia says the club has helped organise the festival since then. In 1971 the Jazz Section of the Czech Musicians' Union was created through an administrative loophole. It grew to around 7,000 members before the authorities cancelled its 1980 festival and, in 1984, shut it down.
Names who played here
Wikipedia lists Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck and Chick Corea among the visitors, and Czech names including Karel Krautgartner, Miroslav Vitouš, Jiří Stivín and Jiří Jelínek. Krautgartner, a clarinettist and saxophonist, played at Reduta with his quintet and led the Czechoslovak Radio dance orchestra from 1960. Karel Velebný went on to lead SHQ, one of the most influential Czech jazz groups. The club's own site mentions that presidents and other public figures have sat in its VIP seats.
1989 and after
After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the club's international profile grew, which its own site credits to the agency Pragokoncert Bohemia promoting it abroad. The same page says The Guardian named Reduta among Europe's best jazz venues, and the club's programme page now describes it as repeatedly in the world's top ten. Treat those as the club's own claims.
Two presidents and a saxophone
On 11 January 1994 the Czech president Václav Havel brought the US president Bill Clinton to Reduta. Havel presented him with a Czech-made saxophone, and Clinton sat in with Czech players for Summertime and My Funny Valentine. A Jazz in Europe account lists the band and says guests included Madeleine Albright and Prime Minister Václav Klaus.
The club today
Today the club presents jazz in many styles, from swing and Dixieland to modern jazz, big band, blues, funk, bossa nova and jazz pop, and its pages describe the building as a cultural monument. Wikipedia adds that the venue also hosts theatre. The programme changes most evenings. A visitor arrives to find a working band in a dark hall with a bar next door, a setup that has changed less than the city around it.
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