![]() There was no question in my mind about staying here. You just have to join what I guess they call the big professional league. "I knew that sooner or later I would end up over here in the United States, simply because when you reach a certain level in music you have to join your peers - so to speak - and I felt that the only way I could move forward and really get to the level I was capable of was to come to the US and play with the musicians that lived here. After winning a scholarship to Boston's Berklee School of Music in 1968, he took the decision to remain in the US after Soviet troops occupied Czechoslovakia in the same year: That Jan Hammer had become a national success story in his native Czechoslovakia at such a young age is hardly surprising given that he began studying the piano when he was four and was part of a touring and recording jazz ensemble by the time he was fourteen.ĭespite such a dramatic rise to prominence in his own country, however, Jan Hammer was keen to continue developing as a musician. Both the film and its soundtrack have become something of a cult classic for Czech audiences, on a par with Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or The Wizard of Oz in the English-speaking world. ![]() The young Jan Hammer's early achievements included writing the music for the Czechoslovak film Silene Smutna Princezna or The Terribly Sad Princess, which he wrote before he was even 20 years of age. But by the time I was about sixteen years of age, my work in the field of music had gotten so good or rewarding that I was pretty much able to support myself, so I decided that it was going to be my career." "Well, obviously growing up in a family like that, there was barely anything else I could do, even though I almost became a doctor, which is what my father was in addition to being a musician and a composer. Coming from such an illustrious musical background, their son - Jan Hammer junior - says it was almost inevitable that he would embark on a musical career: and his father Jan Hammer senior was also a renowned jazz musician. Jan Hammer, photo: He is the son of singer Vlasta Pruchova, the so-called "first lady of Czech Jazz".
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