New documentary from Czech Television featuring Skip WIlkins and his life and work in the Czech Republic, through his many travels there. The video, nearly entirely in Czech language, will show Skip at work at various workshops in the Czech Republic and in Prague. CLICK HERE TO WATCH.
Pianist and composer Skip Wilkins has many international CD release credits as a leader or co-leader, and those as a sideman with international luminaries, including National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, Phil Woods. Skip has two CD releases in 2022. His November 2022 Deer Head Records release is Skip & Dan Wilkins Quartet: In the Stars (DH012), and his summer 2022 New Port Line release is In Morava (Na Moravě) (NPL 0022-25). The international promotion of In Morava begins in April 2023.
Right before the pandemic hit, Skip celebrated two CD releases in 2019. In September of that year, Deer Head Records released Skip & Dan Wilkins Quartet: Someday (DH010). Earlier in January New Port Line Records released Skip Wilkins Quartet, featuring Daniel Wilkins: Czech Wishes (NPL 0018-20, Czech Republic). Some previous releases as a leader or co-leader include Live at Jazzinec (Ray Service, Czech Republic), Czech Dreams (New Port Line NPL 0013-05, Czech Republic), and Father & Son (SteepleChase LookOut SCCD-33102).
In the Stars is the second of three releases featuring Skip Wilkins and his son Dan (tenor saxophone) with Tony Marino (bass) and Bill Goodwin (drums). (2019’s Someday is the first.) Skip has had a long relationship with the Deer Head Inn in the beautiful Poconos in Pennsylvania’s Delaware Water Gap, the backdrop for this new CD. In 2022, Skip celebrates ten years living literally at the Deer Head. Both In the Stars and Someday (Deer Head Records) are vibrant recordings from this stellar quartet of old friends, each member a mainstay of the Deer Head Community. In these recordings, the group plays stellar songs from the Great American Songbook – those worthy of much more attention. In the fall of 2023, look for Skip & Dan Wilkins Quartet: Everything I Love, the quartets third release.
In Morava (Na Moravě) features Skip’s new compositions in a trio format with long-time musical partners Josef Fečo (bass) and Tomáš Hobzek (drums). Saxophonist Rostislav Fraš also performed as a guest on three selections. The album is dedicated to Rosťa, who died in 2019 after a long illness. With the title track – In Morava (Na Moravě) – Skip delivers a haunting homage to the Moravian region of the Czech Republic. Other songs are dedicated to Czech friends or represent a variety of remembrances of his travels abroad.
Czech Wishes features Skip with his son Daniel and three stellar Czech musicians in the vanguard of the jazz scene in Prague, including trumpeter Miroslav Hloucal, bassist Tomáš Baroš and drummer Marek Urbánek. Skip wrote all of the pieces, which the group recorded in Studio Svárov near Prague.
Live at Jazzinec features Skip with the European group, Trio WUH (Wilkins, František Uhlíř, Jaromír Helešic). This surprise release was captured live at the Festival Jazzinec in Trutnov, Czech Republic. The group gave 200 performances throughout Central Europe from 2012-2016. CLICK HERE TO SEE AND HEAR TRIO WUH IN A LIVE TV BROADCAST FROM PRAGUE CASTLE.
Czech Dreams has Skip writing for and playing with an ensemble of great young Czech musicians, including Libor Šmoldas, Tomáš Baroš, Tomáš Hobzek, with guests Rostislav Fraš and Maruška Puttnerová.
Pianist
On Father & Son, Skip and his son Daniel join forces with the other members of Skip’s New York Trio, bassist Scott Lee and drummer Jeff Hirshfield, for a set of Skip’s compositions. A brilliant, young saxophonist, Dan studied at the Manhattan School of Music and is otherwise very active with a range of his own groups in New York and Pennsylvania, and as a sideman there and in Europe, where he has toured extensively. Together, Skip and Daniel have headlined at festivals and clubs in Prague, Berlin and beyond, playing music penned by each of them.
With the trio Skip has two acclaimed Dreambox Media CD releases, I Concentrate on You (DMJ-1133), and After (DMJ-1135). I Concentrate on You features a sublime set of standards, some well known and others less often played. This collection of pieces was recorded impromptu-style on the second day of the sessions. A day earlier, the trio recorded an ambitious set of Skip’s new compositions, released together as After. These pieces bear his unmistakable signature – a curious blend of his harmonic, melodic and rhythmic ideas, and this trio puts an emphatic new stamp on his writing.
Someday: Listed in Jazz Station among the Top Instrumental Jazz Albums of 2019.
Instrumental Jazz CD of the Month, October 2019
…stunning interplay…
Skip’s piano comping for bassist Tony Marino’s solo is a study in counterpoint, and drummer Bill Goodwin’s support and anticipation throughout Skip’s solo is a masterclass in rhythmic ingenuity.
Dan shines…with a marvelous melodic exploration that reminds one of the tone and time-feel of Dexter Gordon…
-Jazz Station
Someday: "…a beautiful album of historic relevance. I found myself playing this album again, just for the pure enjoyment of it." -Musical Memoirs
Someday: "One of the tastiest workouts you are going to find…" -Midwest Record
Someday: "It’s a timeless swing-fest." -The Aquarian Weekly
Someday: "This is authentic, tried and true jazz – the kind you can expect to hear on a visit to the historic Deer Head Inn." -Making a Scene
Someday: "These gentlemen have chosen their material wisely, and play it with exquisite taste."
-Jersey Jazz
Czech Wishes: "a well-conceived album, with heartfelt devotion to friends and family, far and wide, who have shaped Wilkins so profoundly.” -All About Jazz
Czech Wishes: "Skip Wilkins writes very melodically and plays piano with passionate exuberance."
-Musical Memoirs (Los Angeles)
Czech Wishes: “The great pianist Skip Wilkins... has befriended Czech jazzmen to such a degree that the joint recordings form an essential part of his CD discography.” -Kulturní magazín UNI (Czech Republic)
Czech Wishes: “Stunning solos” -JazzPort (Czech Republic)
Czech Wishes: “executed with great feeling and taste” -Jazz Quad (Russia)
Czech Wishes: "superbly arranged" -Jonáš (Czech Republic)
Live at Jazzinec: "arguably, one of the best new dynamic trios in the jazz world today" -All About Jazz
Live at Jazzinec: "amazing jazz album – telepathic interplay," music rating of *****
-Jazzport (Czech Republic)
Live at Jazzinec: "masters of their instruments" -SkJazz (Slovak Republic)
Czech Dreams: "truly spectacular – riveting – one of the most successful albums of the last year,"
music rating of ***** -Jazzport (Czech Republic)
“Righteous Heat.” -Philadelphia Inquirer
“Compositions filled with emotional intelligence.” -JazzPage.net (Tokyo)
“Wilkins goes from soulful, gut-bucket mode to rich ballads to angular modern jazz...”
-Philadelphia Inquirer
“Full of emotion and intellectual fervor.” -All About Jazz
“West Coast cool but with updated, East Coast suavity.” -Philadelphia Inquirer
“Wilkins is an inventive, subtle pianist...[his] music has an edge; he’s searching for, and more often than not finding, his own voice, which is really what jazz is all about...” -Allentown Morning Call
“Wilkins has a particularly nice touch both composing and playing ballads.” -Cadence |
