Returning to Israel and jazz again

April 3, 2009 - 10:11 AM by Harry

Jaroslav Jakubovic, or JJ, as he’s known in some jazz circles, can’t stay away from Israel. And he can’t seem to stay in Israel either.

Jakubovic grew up in Prague and has fond memories of cutting Czech military orchestra rehearsal short to play an impromptu, defiant jazz “welcome” to the Soviet tanks as they rolled in to the city in 1968. At the age of 20, Jakubovic defected two weeks later and moved to Israel.

But soon he was abroad again, studying jazz at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and jamming with the likes of Lionel Hampton, Bobby Rosengarden and Buddy Rich in New York. By the end of the Seventies, he was maintaining a successful career as a saxophonist, doing time in jazz orchestras, releasing solo albums and serving as a session man and accompanist for Carly Simon, Bette Midler, Paul Simon and others.

But in 1980, he moved back to Israel. As he recently told Ha’aretz,

“When I got married, I promised my mother that my children would grow up in Israel and there was no way in the world I wouldn’t keep my promise.”

Jakubovic worked as a producer for CBS records in Israel over the Eighties and Nineties, overseeing landmark rock-pop albums including Shalom Chanoch’s Chatuna Levana (White Wedding), but he also worked on a lot of cheese and crap, if he does say so himself:

“I ran after nothing. To make money I got into all sorts of productions of bullshit that made me want to vomit. Terrible things. And in the end I also didn’t make money.”

He claims that his move back abroad in 2001 is unrelated to these more embarrassing projects, and he regrets the move. The Ha’aretz profile/interview was published on the occasion of a visit to Israel to celebrate the local release of Coincidence, a new project that brought him back to jazz performance, thanks to the cajoling of old Prague friend George Mraz, so JJ still comes to visit regularly.

And he’s trying to find new ways to get back involved with the Israeli industry, including through his own label, VMM, but there are no plans to officially move back here:

“I’m not planning to return and I really don’t miss the industry and the cliques. But I can’t disconnect from this place. The roots have sunk in deep. I miss Israel without realizing. It’s totally missing.”

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