Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Larry Vuckovich was born on December 8, 1936 in Kotor, Montenegro and spent his childhood in Yugoslavia where he received classical piano lessons. He became familiar with jazz listening to radio broadcasts of AFN and Voice of America. Suffering persecution under Tito, his family emigrated to the US in 1951, received political asylum and settled in San Francisco, California.

Visited local jazz clubs Larry listened to jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane, and started playing jam sessions with musicians on the local jazz scene such as John Handy and Cal Tjader. He studied music at San Francisco State University alongside Roland Kirk, Mickey Roker and Bob Cranshaw, while getting instructed by Vince Guaraldi.

1959 saw Vuckovich starting his professional career in the band of Brew Moore. Soon thereafter, he accompanied singers like Irene Kral, David Allyn and Mel Tormé. By 1965 he had joined the band of Jon Hendricks to tour with him throughout the world, before settling in Munich, Germany as house pianist of the jazz club Domicile. While working there, he performed with Lucky Thompson, Pony Poindexter, Clifford Jordan, Dexter Gordon, Slide Hampton and Dusko Goykovich among others.

Returning to San Francisco he took up residency at the Keystone Korner until 1983 playing with the likes of  Arnett Cobb, Buddy Tate, Leon Thomas, Philly Joe Jones and Charles McPherson. From 1985 to 1990, Vuckovich worked in New York City with Curtis Fuller, Milt Hinton, Al Cohn, Tom Harrell and many others. Afterwards, he returned to the West Coast in order to pursue projects of his own, which included bands Blue Balkan, Young at Heart and La Orquesta el Vuko.

He has also performed with Bobby Hutcherson, Larry Grenadier, Hadley Caliman, Cal Collins and Eddie Vinson. He became the artistic director for the West Coast Jazz Festival and the Nappa Valley Jazz Festival and founded his own label “Tetrachord Music”, for which he also acts as producer. Pianist Larry Vuchovich continues to perform, tour and record under his own name for Concord, Hot House, Inner City and Palo Alto Jazz record labels


NJ APP
Uplift Someone’s World

 NJ-TWITTER

More Posts: