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Wednesday, May 17, 2000
It's soon apparent that Klikar, founder of the Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra (OPSO) and the group's director for 25 years, is not an ordinary man. Or even an ordinary jazz musician. Within five minutes of this reporter's arrival, Klikar jumps behind the massive digital organ that dominates the room and begins chanting. "It's a form of religious music from 2,000 years ago," he says. "It's not me playing. It is God. I like to say I am not playing the musical instrument but the musical instrument is playing me." If anyone can get away with such lofty statements, it's Klikar. The man has accomplished more musically in one lifetime than one would think humanly possible. He's catalogued every church organ in the Czech and Slovak republics. He plays the coronet, trumpet, piano, organ, harpsichord, tuba, mellophone and keyboard. He's also the founder of several groups popular in Prague and beyond -- from a swing band to OPSO to the widely respected baroque orchestra Musica Antiqua Praha. The real thing "Everyone knows Pavel Klikar is not a normal man," says Robert Radosta, manager of the music club Malostranska beseda and a close friend of Klikar's. "He's the type of man who is born once a half-century. He can do anything he tries." Klikar put the lion's share of this genius into OPSO, his longtime musical love child. OPSO plays American hot jazz and dance music from the 1920s -- brilliantly. The band is legendary for its authenticity, reproducing the spirit and sound of that music with uncanny accuracy. Even listening to an OPSO album (with Klikar accompanying on a 1912 French coronet) is an electrifying experience. Flashes of the golden age of jazz flicker through the mind like lights on the New York skyline. This is classic American music, full of nostalgia.
Klikar is a big believer in the power of music -- even as a healing force. "Seventeenth-century healing music works," he says with a straight face. "Sound which is able to cure cancer -- why not? I have tested frequencies with all of the best healers." And yet the man is no flake. He speaks about the social history of Chicago jazz and the peculiar musical landscape of New Orleans in the 1920s with the fluency of a musicology professor. He began tinkering with his favorite instrument, the organ, as a 6-year-old, and went on to spend his late teens cataloguing every organ in every church in the Czech and Slovak republics. He memorized the notes and tuning on these organs, and can play in any of those tunings, meticulously programmed on his beloved Ahborn digital organ. After tearing in and out of different styles on this organ, Klikar takes a breath and gasps: "It's endless." He improvised this solo jam as he went along, playing everything from American hot jazz to African tribal chants to early Christian hymns in quick succession. But the entirely self-taught virtuoso downplays his gift, proclaiming: "The music is in the air." Hard times Klikar's lightness of spirit endures despite grappling with some big disappointments in recent years. "Just now is difficult for me," he says. "Now, success is only available with filthy money and bribery and things with which I don't want to be involved." In 1995 Ondrej Havelka, his longtime singer, started the Golden Prague Syncopated Orchestra in Berlin, hiring away many of Klikar's band members. Havelka, the famous face in Klikar's band, also struck deals with many of the foreign promoters OPSO had dealt with for years. Klikar's band was dropped from their rosters. Havelka only recently changed the name of his offshoot group. "People think I'm an idiot for not suing," Klikar says. "But I do not like having enemies. I love Havelka. I have seen his good face." Despite this huge loss, Klikar still leads OPSO in shows several times a month, continuing a 25-year tradition. But change is in the air. "An orchestra is like a river," he says. "Without changing it is impossible to hold quality." Klikar has a new idea: to populate OPSO with talented teenage musicians. He already has a few sprinkled through the ranks. "Everything is possible with them," Klikar said. "They are 10 times quicker than me. For the first time I am a friend and not a teacher, because they are very high quality. They just don't have experience." Recently OPSO has experimented with 1930s jazz as well. But the 1920s sound remains Klikar's great love, and one to which he remains true -- for better or worse, rich or poor. "The big obstacle is money," he says. "There is no money to be made in the Czech Republic. But I am happy now. I might not have money. But I have a brain full of ideas, and it is a joy." Suzanne Smalley's e-mail address is ssmalley@praguepost.cz FEATURES
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