Jaroslav Ježek: Works

One of Jaroslav Ježek's first big hits, the Bugatti Step was written in 1930 as a tribute to the success of the race-car driver Eliška Junková and her Bugatti car. It is an up-tempo, rag-like piece that is still popular. Ježek wrote versions for piano and jazz orchestra and for solo piano.

Jaroslav Ježek (1906 - 1942) was a Czech composer, pianist, and conductor who occupies an important position in the history of Czech music between World Wars I and II. He was born with poor eyesight, and a series of operations left him nearly blind for his adult life. Much of his early work consists of chamber, piano, and concertant compositions, influenced by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schönberg, and the Parisian Les Six.

He became a popular jazz composer after meeting the playwrights/comedians Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec (a.k.a. George Voskovec), leaders of the Osvobozené divadlo (Prague Liberated Theatre) in Prague. Ježek became the main composer and conductor for the theater, and from 1928 to 1939, he composed incidental music, songs, dances, and ballets for the comic and satirical plays and movies of Voskovec and Werich. His innovative melodies are still well known in the Czech Republic. Ježek was forced to emigrate to the United States when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia.

Fascinated by American jazz, he organized and conducted an orchestra, Ježek Big Band, featuring his original jazz compositions and arrangements. Among the band's recordings are Bugatti Step (1930), Teď ještě ne (Not Yet; 1931), and Rubbish Heap Blues (1937). Ježek Big Band also recorded his arrangements of some well-known jazz standards, such as Tiger Rag, Dinah, and Chinatown, My Chinatown.

Bugatti Step, with pianist Michal Smrcka